There’s normally something in an Oklahoma City Thunder game that fans can get excited about.
Maybe it’s a Josh Giddey pass. Maybe it’s Lu Dort barrelling to the basket. Usually it’s a fun, overbearing effort that turns large deficits into close games and drives the good teams insane.
In the Thunder’s 102-89 loss to the Houston Rockets, there was none of that. With 16% 3-point shooting, a second-quarter point tally even lower than that 16 mark, and a double-digit loss to a team that entered the game with the worst record in the league, this game ranks is one of OKC’s worst losses of the season.
During the Thunder’s now-six-game losing streak, there had yet to be a loss that was capital-B bad. They led the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards during the fourth quarter of both respective games. The losses to the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics were by single digits. The one against the Atlanta Hawks was lowercase-B bad, but the Thunder played a good first half and then outscored Atlanta by 10 in the fourth quarter.
The Rockets, unlike every aforementioned team, are not playoff probables. Even with their three-game winning streak, they have the worst record in the Western Conference. It’s a team that the Thunder beat by a dozen points less than two weeks ago, but this time, Houston didn’t have Jalen Green. Capital-B Bad.
To be fair, Oklahoma City was also missing important pieces. The lack Kenrich Williams, who was out due to an ankle injury suffered on Friday, left a gaping hole. Derrick Favors was ruled out with an illness just a couple hours before the game, and the Thunder’s depth at big was further tested when Mike Muscala was ruled out with right ankle soreness during the first quarter and before he entered the game.
Each of those absences had a clear impact, whether statistically or through the eye test.
With Williams off the court: The Rockets matched and beat the Thunder’s energy, aggression, and propensity for taking charges.
As for Favors: Christian Wood finished with 24 points, 21 rebounds and three blocks. The Thunder relied on Isaiah Roby and Paul Watson to back up Jeremiah Robinson-Earl.
Roby was excellent in his season-high 27 minutes. He finished with 17 points on 8-for-10 shooting and five rebounds. Roby was active on cuts, made one of his two 3s, and had finishes that ranged from slam dunks to craftily avoiding an offensive foul to draw the and-one.
Watson got 20 minutes in his first appearance of the season. He played solid defense and had six rebounds, but his offense was prohibitive for the Thunder. He missed all four shots he attempt, each of which came from behind the 3-point line and two of which were in the corner. Houston was more than happy to let him shoot, and when the defense sagged off of him to clog the lane, he could not make them pay.
That’s a void that Muscala would have filled, and it turned out disastrous for the Thunder. It wasn’t solely Watson by any means; the Thunder missed 27 of their first 31 3-point attempts before Shai Gilgeous-Alexander mercifully hit a pair of stepbacks from behind the arc in the third quarter to provide a little stability.
Excluding SGA, the starters were 1-for-19 from 3. The team finished 7-for-43, a mark of 16.3% that’s bad even by the standards of a team that is among the worst from deep this season.
Those four non-SGA starters finished with a combined 15 points. Gilgeous-Alexander had 22 points on 9-for-20 shooting, but went 2-for-6 from the free throw line.
Even with this lack of offense, the Thunder had a chance.
Houston scored only 18 points in the second quarter and was held scoreless over the first four minutes. This allowed the Thunder to take the 33-31 lead with 7:12 to go in the half when Tre Mann hit an and-one.
Then momentum stalled. Over the next 7:11, the Thunder were outscored 15-2 before Gilgeous-Alexander hit a shot at the buzzer to give them a breath entering the locker room. But with just 38 points through 24 minutes of play, it was a not a deep breath.
That shot didn’t give them a halftime push them either. The Rockets extended their lead to 21 points as the Thunder scored just 12 points in the first 10 minutes of the third quarter before very suddenly finding their wind. Over the final 1:44 of the frame, they almost doubled their total of the quarter with an 11-3 run. OKC cut the deficit to 10 less than two minutes into the fourth quarter, and for a brief moment, it looked like the team was on the brink of a classic 2021-22 Thunder performance.
But just as quickly, it blossomed back up and out of hand. The Rockets scored five points in a row to stymie OKC’s progress, and the Thunder could never cut it to single digits.
It wasn’t Oklahoma City’s worst game of the season, but it’s not far behind.
A couple positive notes can be made:
In general, the defense was good. The Thunder had 10 blocks and 10 steals. They can hang their hat on that performance. The Rockets shot just 41.7% from the field.
Tre Mann matched Roby’s 17 points off the bench. The rookie guard had seven rebounds, two steals and a block in 30 minutes. In fact, despite the 13-point loss, all three bench players who reached 20 minutes — Mann, Roby and Watson — had a positive plus-minus. None of the starters did.
That’s in part due to minutes from Rockets starters compared to their bench, but Mann and Roby both played more than four of the five Thunder starters. It’s not as though they were against the back of the bench. Plenty of time came with Wood, Kevin Porter Jr. and Jae’Sean Tate on the court.
But every time the Thunder started to find life, it was drained out of them. Wood posted his 20/20 and is once again looking like an All-Star. Kevin Porter Jr. had a triple-double, albeit on a gift-wrapped final rebound. Garrison Matthews made five 3-pointers.
The Thunder just weren’t nearly as good, composed or energetic as the Rockets. Houston may be in last place, but Oklahoma City is the team with the six-game losing streak heading into December.
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