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A worrying theme for the Thunder in this series has been starting the halves slowly offensively, barely moving the ball and taking free kicks.
We’ve been able to ignore this trend in the last two games with OKC wins, but today’s game shows that you can’t afford to start the halves slowly during the playoffs.
OKC’s 2-game losing streak came to an end when the Houston Rockets defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 114-80.
Eventually, slow offensive starts will come back to bite him, and that happened today in the third quarter where the Rockets outscored the Thunder 37-18 and expanded their 3-point lead at halftime to 22 points at the start of the fourth quarter.
No one in the Thunder outside of Dennis Schroder, who finished with 19 points in 21 minutes before being sent off, could create his offense.
Danilo Gallinari scored a point; Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had his worst game on both ends since Game 1 with just four points and was chased on defense with breakers, with Houston giving Lu Dort the green light to shoot as many 3-pointers as he wanted. It worked perfectly for the Rockets, as they missed all nine of their attempts.
When the Thunder needed a bucket to stop the bleeding, Chris Paul struggled to respond to the call as he scored just 16 points before leaving the fourth quarter with play out of control and hurting his knee.
The Thunder played into the hands of the Rockets when they threw a horrendous 7-44 (15.9%) of three in this game. If OKC forces a Game 7, they should stop scoring 3-pointers and find better quality shots by moving off the ball and attacking the paint. The Thunder are not a 3-point shooting team and they don’t have the talent to turn to the isos.
Oklahoma City played poorly in the first half, but was able to stay in the game because the Rockets missed their shots from the outside, but that caught up with them in the third quarter, and the game was quickly lost in the Rockets’ offensive bombardment.
It also didn’t help that Dennis Schröder was sent off in the third quarter, along with PJ Tucker. The altercation occurred when Schröder hit Tucker below the belt and Tucker reacted by headbutting Schröder.
Many thought that the return of Russell Westbrook would have been a significant indicator of who wins this game, depending on his game, but Westbrook was relatively calm. The Thunder lost this game due to poor shooting, lack of ball movement and communication failures on defense.
