RealGM

Russell Westbrook / Thabo Sefolosha / Kevin Durant / Jeff Green / Nenad Krstic

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Deron Williams / Wes Matthews / Ronnie Brewer / Carlos Boozer / Kyrylo Fesenko

Matchup

Another tough road game Utah is decimated by injuries, half their bench is out and Mehmet Okur is probably out also with an illness. They start Wes Matthews and Kyrylo Fesenko, though Paul Millsap and Andrei Kirilenko will see a lot of minutes off the bench. Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams are there too, so this is a team that will probably still get it done on the offensive end

Kevin Durant should do well against Brewer or Matthews but may have a little trouble with Kirilenko if he's guarded by him; it's rare for KD to be matched up with someone with his length. Jeff Green once again will be the focal point on defense (good or bad) against Boozer and Millsap. Nenad Krstic and the big guys get a bit of a reprieve since Utah doesn't have any real huge big guy to muscle people around.

Utah's a tough place to win but with the injuries and the matchup in general it's a winnable game if we play smart.

Some Numbers

After another debacle OKC's defensive rating has dropped to 7th, offensive rating is 7th worst. I guess that evens out, huh?

Russell Westbrook's PER dropped by almost 1.5 points (19.2 to 17.8) after the Laker game. Way too many mistakes by Russ.

The Thunder are approaching a dubious distinction, one bad night from Nenad Krstic and they'll have a starting lineup comprised of sub .450 field goal shooters. As it stands, here are the shooting percentages of the starting lineup: .421, .402, .446, .423, .470. Without researching, I'm confident this is the worst shooting starting lineup in the NBA.

A Question

Can OKC pull out another surprise road win?

The shooting % are a little misleading. KD had that one terrible game and its dragged his % down.

Anyway. I think we have a relly great chance here.Boozer and Milsap haven't been all that amazing this year (esp Milsap). I am expecting a our young team to bounce back HARD!

Thunder 92
Jazz 86

I think we win. Guys will be motivated after the Laker loss.

The Jazz don't lose at home.

I'm bitter. This game was voted on as the game of the week so my 7 team league pass gets blacked out. Nice to see I paid $90.00 to watch the Thunder and they keep blacking the game out every time the fans vote for the Thunder to play as the game of the week. I'm sure I could go pirate it but I'll be watching my Zags plays Wisconsin.

Westbrook just ignored Durant, who was asking for the ball and dribbled into a turnover.

Jeff Green 2 fouls, great news for OKC!

LOOK IT'S IBAKA!

Ibaka nice looking J

Weaver knows how to run the offense much better than Westbrick.

What's with Westbrook? Why is he keeping the ball away from both Jeff Green and Durant? I think he thought that the team is built around him and Kristic.

crazylyf wrote:What's with Westbrook? Why is he keeping the ball away from both Jeff Green and Durant? I think he thought that the team is built around him and Kristic.

Play Weaver more minutes until Westbrick learns to share the ball. Weaver is good at moving the ball around, and he plays defense so he is not a black hole.

Does anyone know why Weaver fell out of the rotation? I mean he started some games for us last year and was our best perimeter defender until we traded for Thabo?

I hope IBLOCKYA gets more mins!

Been a solid games so far. FAR better than last season.

Westbrook is a constant source of frustration though.

Eleqtrique, who is that chick @ your avatar?

no defense so far in the Third LOL

WOW we came out hot!

Its becoming a trend actually

Clangus wrote:no defense so far in the Third LOL

no kidding lol. Every shot we are taking we are wide open.

The ball movement has been great on offense and we're knocking down the shots but man the frontcourt's defense has been non-existant.

Gotta admit that Ibaka looks like he's improving. Doing a better job overall in this one.

slick_watts wrote:The ball movement has been great on offense and we're knocking down the shots but man the frontcourt's defense has been non-existant.

Doesn't this game remind you of Orlando? the 1st one? Great ball movement great shooting, also Utah is playing bad defense.

Utah's been pretty bad defensively, their bigs don't seem too keen on chasing Green / Durant / Krstic on the perimeter. This team just misses a lot of open shots in some games though, it's good to see them knock them down.

If they can become consistent with that three point shot (mainly Durant) this is a tough offense. It's the lack of consistent outside shooting that stalls the offense all the time since we can't get anything easy near the basket.