Before OKC’s matchup against the San Antonio Spurs, the Thunder lost nine of their last 11 games. Unfortunately for them, they fell to the Spurs in blowout fashion,118-96, losing their 10th in 12 tries.
The writing is on the wall with what’s going wrong with the Thunder right now; they’re just young and lack the talent and stamina that comes with a long 82-game season. Not to mention, they’re on a road trip. However, what happened with the Thunder against the Spurs?
They were out-assisted from the jump. From the first seven minutes of the first quarter, San Antonio did a better job distributing the ball than OKC did. They did such a great job passing the ball that Dejounte Murray recorded his eighth career triple-double with 23 points, a career-high 14 assists, and ten rebounds. OKC’s high assist men were Josh Giddey with eight, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with seven. Outside of those two, the Thunder recorded four assists as a team.
As a whole, the Spurs out-assisted OKC 32-19.
The best player for the Thunder was a rookie, and while this is a developing team and it’s good to see young guys having big games, it’s dually as disappointing to see the caliber of game Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had, only scoring 13 points on 5-of-21 shooting. Lu Dort could have also had a better showing after only scoring 15 points on 4-13 shooting.
After losing 10 of 12 games, brief updates are the way to go. The Thunder have fallen to (14-30) on the season, and the NBA Draft Lottery is beginning to look increasingly bright for a team that’s trying to rack up another talented draft class. OKC will continue their four-game road trip against the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night to try and stop their current three-game losing streak.
