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Yahoo! Box Score:
Richardson: Don't fall asleep dude, you're still in the game!
First of all, apologies if this recap is a bit short, but just as I was two picture copy and pastes away from being done, I accidentally click on an outside link, and my near hour of work is destroyed. Yeah. Depressing.
In any case, the tale of this game is that the thunder coaching staff were nice enough to give the Tulsa fans a show. Some scoff at the fact that there was only 10,000 at the BOK Center, but given the fact that there was a College football game between the Tulsa Golden Hurricane and the Boise State Broncos only a few miles away, and that stadium had 30,000 people in it, it isn't that bad of a number. Brian Davis called it "the biggest night in Tulsa sports history", and for a town of only roughly 85,000-90,000 inhabitants, I'd say that sentiment is correct.
The two best players from tonight were clearly Kevin Durant and Jeff Green. But, when considering who to put as Thunder Wonder, due to the fact Kevin Durant has 4 Turnovers and 5 fouls, I'll give the award to Jeff Green, who had 25 Points, was a perfect 3 of 3 from down town, and had 3 Rebounds. Still, you'll have a hard time finding problems with Kevin Durants Thunder Down Under earning night, with 30 points and 6 rebounds. And you can't forget the always solid Westbrook, who was a real team player and nearly achieved a triple double with 12 points, 6 rebounds, and 7 assists, along with a whopping 3 steals. Still, 4 turnovers, which is pretty bad for a PG, keep him out of earning any awards.
The bench was totally worthless tonight, as evidenced by the 9 point deficit they helped bring into the 4th quarter. Kyle Weaver did his thing and filled up the intangibles, but otherwise, you had Ibaka, Ruffin, and Kelley do nothing, and Krstic, Mullens, and Livingston do next to nothing. It's hard to determine anyone who is specifically at fault, but I'll go ahead and give the Thunder Blunder award to Michael Ruffin, who couldn't even score in front of his home crowd. Not only that, but it was almost certainly his first and last chance to do that on an NBA level. Sure, he could play for the 66ers and do it, but it just wouldn't be the same.
As far as the Heat go, Beasley was far and away their best player. Sure, 7 turnovers are bad, but nobody else stepped up enough or had few enough turnovers while stepping up to prove him otherwise. Thus, he runs away with the Thunder Plunderer award, earning a solid 24 Points, 4 Rebounds, and 2 Assists. They played their starters most of the time, but they really couldn't keep up with our guys, especially in the end. Still, they didn't play with Dwayne Wade (much to the disappointment of the Tulsa fans), so it's hard to take anything away from this game if you're a Heat fan. The question for the Heat this year will be whether they can take the fallen stars (O'Neal, Richardson, Magloire, to some extent Arroyo), the young guns (Beasley, Chalmers, Jones, Wright, Quinn), and the 06 Championship holdouts (Haslem, Cook, Wade) and make them into a serious team. There's no question in my mind that they'll make the playoffs, but whether they can get it together early enough in the season in order to get enough wins for a good seed is the big question. We'll see, but right now they're definitely a solid dark horse candidate for the Eastern Conference Crown.
Next Game: October 19th, at Houston, 7:30 PM CST, No TV
Sadly, we have another no TV game coming up, but the good news is that it's the 2nd to last no TV game we have, and the season is only two weeks away! I'm ready!
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