Oklahoma City at L.A. Clippers
Time: 9:30 PM CT, TNT
Spread: OKC -1
Total: 213.5
Odds c/o 5dimes
The Oklahoma City Thunder have won seven of its past 10 overall and travel to face the L.A. Clippers at Staples Center in the second game of a TNT Thursday night doubleheader. The Clippers have won
four straight games and are 10-7 at home this season. OKC is 1-point favorites in the game, which has an over/under of 213.5 points.
OKC
While Russell Westbrook continues to play amazing basketball, Carmelo Anthony is struggling to find his niche and role with his new team. Chances of demoting Anthony to a Sixth Man remain low, howsoever it might be the best thing that Billy Donovan could do to inject some life into the Thunders’ second unit. Anthony is averaging a career-low 17.6 points per game and attempting just 15.6 field goals per game.
Similarly, Paul George has reduced his load to 16.4 shots per game, but Westbrook maintains his 21.1 field goals per game. The balance needs to be struck more, particularly since outside of that big Three, and Steven Adams, the Thunder get so little offense from the rest of its cast.
Indeed, a sheer lack of depth continually hurts the Thunder. Jerami Grant, Ray Felton, Alex Abrines and Andre Roberson are all fine players, but a team is in trouble when that quartet comprises its fifth through ninth best players. None of them are major scoring threats, and the Thunder still are not vastly utilizing Patrick Patterson, who looms as a potential source of mid-range shooting and rebounding. While the team does not likely regret losing Victor Oladipo, as well as he is playing in Indiana, maybe it should.
Beyond that, it is not likely George remains in OKC after this season, making this experimental rental all the more of a failure if the Thunder cannot manage to get more from George, and the rest of its team. The Thunder have been strong defensively, but with just three scorers and an active Adams, it is difficult to envision this team posing any legitimate threat to either Houston or Golden State.
LAC
The Clippers (17-19) finally welcomed Blake Griffin back into the lineup. He had 21 points, eight assists and six rebounds in the Clips’ most recent win over the Memphis Grizzlies. In his three games since returning from injury, Griffin has scored 24, 25 and 21 while averaging five assists over the span. His playmaking is crucial with the subtraction of Chris Paul, but he is an adept passer and this Clippers team is playoff-worthy with his play as the paramount reason why.
Having already lost star point guard Chris Paul over the offseason, Los Angeles more or less handed the reigns of the team off to Griffin, who led it in assists at 5.1 per game prior to suffering the leg injury. Griffin is still out up to two months with what is being termed a sprained MCL, and the Clippers really have no offensive creators to step up in his stead.
To be sure, Austin Rivers (15.8 points per game) and Lou Williams (21.7 points per game) are both good bucket-getters, but neither offers much along the way of getting teammates involved, and Patrick Beverley is not known for that a lot either (2.9 assists per game), as the team’s floor general.
Really, the point-forward experiment with Griffin was all the Clippers had to muster a chance against more talented teams in the West, and for all that Danilo Gallinari spoke of the team having the league’s best frontcourt, it is almost devoid of playmakers to get those big men baskets.
Center DeAndre Jordan has suffered sans Paul, and Gallinari is finding it more difficult to get offense as a Clipper than he did during his tenure in Denver either. Between the two, they combine to average just 24.5 points per game, which makes Griffin’s 23.5 per game still not enough. The Clippers put up 105.7 points per game as a team, which is respectable in today’s NBA, but the team is being obliterated defensively and surrendering just as many (105.7) per game.
Even with a premier rim protector like Jordan and a disruptor in the backcourt like Beverley, the Clippers have not found a way to form a coherent team defense, with missing rotations and lazy swings accounting for teams continually hurting L.A. from the perimeter.
The Clippers may trail No. 8 New Orleans by just 1.5 games at this juncture, but all of the teams ahead of Los Angeles (perhaps save cross-town rival Lakers) are better teams on the defensive end. Between not having a real formula for offensive success, but just a glut of talent and the team’s glaring defensive inadequacies make it difficult to envision much more than a first-round sweep at the hands of Houston or Golden State.
That actually sounds like just what a purist would expect, and only Griffin’s own fans
expected him to be able to carry the offensive load for an NBA team for a full season without serious injuries. He is an injury prone star, and the Clippers are now a strange collection of talents without his game-changing abilities on the court. It is not difficult to see why the team is six games below .500 with those woes clearly laid out before the reader.
