Survival depends on road success
It’s been 34 days since Russell Westbrook spoke his mind.
Tired of his team’s struggles on the road, the Thunder guard gathered his teammates on a gameday morning in Brooklyn, N.Y., addressed its seven-game road losing streak and made it clear, it was time to bring it to an end.
The Thunder did it that night in Brooklyn.
Don’t expect a similar pep talk Tuesday in Houston.
“Win or go home. It’s plain and simple,” Westbrook said Monday. “There’s not too much you can add on to it about how the game is played. The schemes and things don’t really matter at this point.”
Trailing the Rockets 3-1 in a best-of-7 firstround playoff series, the Thunder is in a true must-win situation, the first in the NBA for a number of its players.
And that must-win game is on the road, where the Thunder has struggled against Houston in this series and against most everyone over the course of the regular season.
Oklahoma City went 28-13 at home in the regular season, 19-22 on the road, and it’s not the kind
of team that traditionally has road success. It’s the youngest team in the playoffs, and outside of a few players is made up largely of role players, the kind that typically have more success at home.
And its regular-season trends have lingered into the postseason.
Though the Thunder gave itself a chance to win Game 2 in Houston, it lost Game 1 at the Toyota Center 118-87. In two games in Houston, Oklahoma City has scored 99.8 points per 100 possessions and allowed 115.5. At home, it’s scored 111.3 points per 100 possessions and allowed 108.1.
Now, to keep its season alive, the Thunder needs to do something it did seven times in the regular season: win a road game against a team with a winning record. Oklahoma City’s 19 regularseason road wins came against 17 teams with a combined winning percentage of .467.
In the regular season and playoffs combined, Houston is 32-11 at home this season, 4-0 against the Thunder.
“You’re gonna be in this situation, whether it’s Game 5 or Game 7,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “You have to win a game on the road. It doesn’t make a difference. For us, this might as well just be that.”
To advance to the second round, the Thunder needs two road wins. For now, it has to focus on one, and that figures to be a challenge.
In the regular season, OKC forward Andre Roberson shot 8 percentage points worse from the floor on the road than at home. Victor Oladipo’s 3-point percentage had a similar dropoff away from home.
Roberson has picked up his play in the postseason, but Oladipo — whose play was solid in Oklahoma City — is averaging 8.5 points on 19.2 percent shooting on the road in this series.
If the Thunder hopes to play beyond Wednesday, Westbrook will need a boost on from players who haven’t been at their best on the road.
“A lot of these guys, between college and being in the NBA, these guys have played on the road before,” Donovan said. “They know. I’m not so sure you have some kind of a speech you give them to all of the sudden make them play (well) on the road. I think there’s things we need to keep getting better at.
So maybe there’s nothing to say. But there’s road work to do.
“Everyone’s grown up,” Thunder center Steven Adams said. “They know what’s at stake and what they have to do. I’m not going to tell them a bedtime story, and they’ll come out all good. It’s more that they’ve got to come out and do what they do at a high level. It’s everyone.”