Culture of Hoops

LeBron James steals the thunder in Oklahoma City

Image courtesy of Keith Allison/Flickr.

Image courtesy of Keith Allison/Flickr.

Baller Mind Frame’s No Layups brings you the hottest NBA stories on the web mixed with personal opinion from our very own Aaron Lanton. Check it often and absorb the knowledge we’re dropping on you!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tMQsCX0z74[/youtube]

Do you want to start? Or should I? I’ll start.

The Thunder played really bad. And the Heat played pretty good. So the Thunder lost, 103-81 as LeBron James played better than Kevin Durant. That’s what happened.

But here’s why it happened:

Twenty Thunder turnovers turned into 29 Heat points. Ballgame.

Jeremy Lamb, Derek Fisher, Thabo Sefolosha and Reggie Jackson combined for 15 points on 5-23. Ballgame.

The Thunder shot 2-20 from 3 tonight. Ballgame.

Recall back to Miami where the Heat turned it over 21 times which led to 25 Thunder points, Lamb, Fisher, Sefolosha and Jackson combined for 51 on 17-31 and the team shot 16-27 from 3. All of those good things that happened before, did not happen tonight.

So the other why: Was it because Russell Westbrook’s return messed it all up? Scott Brooks used the phrase “out of sync” four times in his postgame comments, which is a polite way to say that they didn’t know what the eff they were doing. It was obvious from tipoff as the Thunder turned it over nine times in the first quarter — eight of them live-ball — which led to a flurry of Heat transition buckets. Daily Thunder

It’s impossible to explain how dominant the Heat were to someone who didn’t watch the game. When the Heat wanted to do something, they did it. Props to the Heat for shutting everyone up, myself included. 

Durant did not play well with James defending him, and Westbrook’s return seemed to stifle the Thunder’s rhythm. I don’t want to come to any conclusions based on one game but the Thunder definitely did not look comfortable last night. – AL

 

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