NOT SO MAGNIFICO
Thunder offense sputters in game against Nets
MEXICO CITY — There were times when it looked so easy. So smooth.
For a fleeting first quarter, the Thunder offense clicked Thursday night at Arena Ciudad de Mexico.
One moment, Alex Abrines — forced into a starting role by an injury to Paul George — was finding Steven Adams for an easy pick-and-roll bucket. The next, the ball was moving, finding an open Abrines for a 3-pointer.
The locals were roaring their approval of Oklahoma City, the road team on the scoreboard.
By the end, everything had changed.
The Thunder’s offense sputtered and its difficult shots stopped dropping.
By the time the Nets closed out a 100-95 win, even the crowd seemed to have warmed to Brooklyn, the plucky underdog that battled back from a 16-point first-half deficit.
At the end, in the altitude, Brooklyn had the fresher legs, evidenced by a driving dunk by Spencer Dinwiddie with 1:51 to play that put the Nets in front 96-91, followed by a Thunder possession on which Carmelo Anthony clanked two jump shots and Steven Adams a pair of free throws.
“I think as the game went on, physically we kept getting better,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said.
As the night wore on, the Thunder offense wore out.
Absent George, who missed the game with a right calf contusion, and Jerami Grant, out with a left hip contusion, the Thunder lacked two of its better defenders. And it struggled to get stops in key moments.
But more than anything, it was the offense that went awry.
Russell Westbrook scored 31 points but shot 10 for 27. Near the end of the game, he appeared to be hobbling slightly, though there was no immediate word as to an injury.
Carmelo Anthony struggled even more, finishing with 11 points and 11 rebounds, but on 5 of 20 shooting. Even Adams’ 6-for-13 showing was
CONTINUED FROM 1B rocky, given his 84.2 percent shooting over the past three games.
“I thought the biggest challenge was, if you look at our possessions, they were really, really good when we got downhill (with dribble penetration),” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “When we didn’t get downhill we really struggled.”
The Thunder had, in recent games, found the value in ball movement, even as shots failed to drop. That was absent during long stretches of difficult shots on Thursday, which Donovan said was mostly attributable to a lack of dribble penetration.
The result was 38.8 percent shooting and a fourth quarter in which Brooklyn outscored OKC 26-16.
In that way, a game in Mexico City looked much like a game anywhere outside Oklahoma City for the Thunder.
Though both teams traveled to play, Brooklyn gave up a home game. So it was a road loss for Oklahoma City, its eighth straight.
The Thunder allows 97.2 points per 100 possessions at home, the second-best home defensive rating in the NBA. On the road, that number dips to 103.4, sixth in the league.
At Chesapeake Energy Arena, the Thunder shoots 44.1 percent, 26th in the league. It’s even worse on the road, at 42.5 percent. Only two teams shoot worse away from home.
Even by that standard on Thursday, the Thunder struggled.
The Nets outscored Oklahoma City 80-62 over the final three quarters, shooting 48.3 percent in that span to the Thunder’s 35.6. Over those final three periods, the Thunder made 4 of 17 3-pointers and 6 of 15 free throws.
During that stretch, Westbrook, Anthony and Adams combined to shoot 15 of 43.