Thoughts:
- Watching SGA takes all the joy out of basketball. The current whistle caters to free throw merchants like him to such an extent that you just expect him to get "fouled" on every single possession, no matter what he does. It's pretty sad since he's so talented.
- Rough game for Lauri (if you can say that when a guy has 19/6/3/2 on good percentages). He was gameplanned into irrelevance. OKC had at least one athletic wing absolutely glued to him at all times, fronting, grabbing, pushing and fouling. That created space elsewhere, but we couldn't make any use of it after the 3pt shots stopped falling. OKC is always one of the toughest matchups for Markkanen, but that's why I would've liked to see him get the ball more in the post against shorter defenders, instead of having to retreat all the way beyond the perimeter to get some breathing room. He had no advantage there. Unfortunately, the post is clogged up because Nurk doesn't scare anyone as an outside threat.
- Never forget there were quite a few people here who liked the Cody Williams pick due to his "pedigree". What BS. The guy sucked in college and he's sucked in the NBA every day since. Personally, I don't want to see him play ever again. It has to stop. His presence on the court is insulting and doesn't bring a single thing to the table. "He just needs strength"? No, he just needs to go away. I don't care if he spends the rest of his career counting all the millions of dollars he stole, just get him out of my sight.
- I hope it's becoming obvious that Flip's final form in the NBA isn't a "hub" but a kind of Lauri-Ultralite, a play finisher who can make some wide open 3's while playing off the bench. He can pass (which is good) but he falls in love with the idea of threading the needle way too often. He's a scoring glue guy, which is fine.
- It's bizarre how we just keep allowing open 3's. Overhelping, messing up switches, not closing guys out, not anticipating where the next pass is going to go. Someone should tell Hardy that collapsing the paint all the time isn't a great defensive strategy in today's NBA.