Washington at Oklahoma City
Time: 7 PM (CT), TNT
Spread: OKC -5.5
Total: 214
Odds c/o 5dimes
The Oklahoma City Thunder are the league’s hottest team, as winner of its past five contests. OKC has pulled within 2.5 games of No. 4 Minnesota in the Western Conference Standings and will host the Washington Wizards as 5.5 point favorites in NBA action on TNT Thursday night. The game tips off at 7 PM (Central) with an over/under of 214 points.
THUNDER NEWS & NOTES
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 17.7 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 21.2 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.
WIZARDS NEWS & NOTES
The Wizards have dropped three of its past four, to fall to 26-21, but there is not much intrigue or mystery behind this team. It is still a team highly dependent on its backcourt of John Wall and Bradley Beal, and a team still bereft of depth on the bench, for the most part.
Wall and Beal really have done all that could be asked of a backcourt. Beal leads the team in scoring at 23.6 points per game and Wall is good for nearly 20 a night, in addition to his 9.2 assists, but Otto Porter is still falling short of expectations and
sophomore Kelly Oubre Jr. is not radically improved from his rookie season a year ago. The Wizards ultimately need to add another superstar to take any sort of monumental jump toward contention, and it may be that the team is able to make a play at
DeMarcus Cousins to reunite him with his former Kentucky teammate Wall.
Outside of that, there is no reason to expect this team to do much more than be a “pretender” with the glaring holes in its roster, and the overwhelming mediocrity at 3 of the 5 positions on the court. Marcin Gortat is a good center, and one of the best in the pick and roll, but Markieff Morris is an erratic head case and the Wiz’ bench is overall just poor. Jason Smith has returned to earth some two years after his breakout season in Orlando, which now can be totally labeled a fluke, as he led the league in mid-range shooting that year.
The Wizards are still the Wizards, to be terse and dismissive of the team, once again.
