QUICK TURNAROUND
What to make of NBA schedule experimenting that has the Thunder in the middle of a stretch of baseball-type series
Al Horford said the Thunder's 30-point loss to the Rockets on Monday night left a bad taste in the team's mouth.
“The fact that we get to play them two days from now, it's great,” Horford said.
Forty- eight hours later, the Thunder crushed the Rockets 104-87 in what was OKC's most lopsided win of the season.
Palate cleansers are now part of the NBA schedule. Revenge, like the Thunder got Wednesday night, doesn't have to wait long.
Every NBA team is playing an average of four mini series
in the first half of its 2020-21 schedule as a way to reduce travel in this pandemicstricken season. The Thunder is in the middle of a six-game stretch that looks more like an MLB than NBA schedule.
A split against the Rockets on Monday and Wednesday. Two home games against the Timberwolves on Friday and Saturday. Two road games at the Lakers next Monday and Wednesday.
“I like it, personally,” Thunder center Isaiah Roby said Wednesday night. “It kinda lets you measure yourself game-togame. Not saying the Rockets are a bad team tonight because of their performance, or we're a bad team because of the last performance we had against them.
“It just gives you another chance to go out and compete against guys that you kind of have a familiarity with. It lets you tweak game plans a little bit and go out the next night and try to outperform the way you did the first time.”
The Thunder's first series this season was back-to-back losses at the Clippers on Jan. 22 and 24. The Thunder lost by 14 points in the first game and by eight points in the second game.
There were 34 baseball-style series completed by Jan. 31. According to ESPN's Kevin Pelton, home teams went 17-17 in the first game and 24-10 in the second game. There were 19 sweeps — including Clippers over Thunder.
“I would say it's good and bad,” Thunder guard Hamidou Diallo said during that Clippers series. “Good reasons: you watch film, you know where you lack and you get another crack at it.”
And the bad?
“It's just more film on you out there for the other side,” Diallo said. “That's pretty much it.”
The Thunder (9-11) will get two cracks at the Timberwolves (5-16) this weekend in a matchup between the bottom two teams in the NBA by net rating.
“We're just making the most of the scheduling format,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “You play the hand you're dealt.”
But Daigneault sees positives in the series-heavy schedule.
“In the NBA schedule, you run into something that bothers you and you end up chasing your shadow but you've got a different opponent coming around the corner,” Daigneault said. “And so it's hard to really spend too much time reflecting on the last game because you've gotta turn the page. The series allow you to do both. You can have your cake and eat it too.”