Alright, it’s time to get back on the Steven Adams beat for real now. It’s been a strange old couple months as the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise adjusted to life without Russell Westbrook for the first time ever and adjusting to losing a guy who’d had such a record usage rate was always going to require some time.
Of all the bonkers things that have gone on during one of the most insane single seasons ever witnessed from a professional kiwi sports club, a sudden 180 flip in form isn’t the most unexpected of those things but it’s up there.
Well, here we are. Seventeen weeks deep into what’s been a crazy and unpredictable season. For all but twelve teams it ends right here, for those twelve playoff bound franchises it’s only just beginning.
Sing hallelujah and be merry dear reader because Thursday night footy is no more for the 2019 season – which is great news for players with niggling injuries not fancying a short turnaround and also for me because it gives me an extra day or so to write this bad boy which is never not a blessing. Busy times that we live in and all that.
With a 4-10 record at the half-way stage of their season, it’s pretty unlikely that the Breakers make the semis from here. They’re four back in the win-column from fourth place and second to last on the ladder.
Lamar Jackson is breaking records, Michael Thomas is breaking records, George Kittle is breaking tackles, Le’Veon Bell is breaking personal bests (but only at the bowling alley), the Dallas Cowboys are breaking hearts, Patrick Mahomes is breaking defences, and the old NFL picks might just be breaking even.
What’s happened since is that the Thunder have started to figure things out. Perhaps not coincidentally that’s happened as Steven Adams has been playing the best basketball of his season so far, looking as healthy as he has to date and living it up in the box scores as a result. Even his free throws have come good!
We’re now fully three quarters through the season and we’re at that stage where teams begin to fall into two distinct categories: playing for this year and playing for next year.
Three games all on Friday and with no more bye weeks we’re now hitting that beautiful long sprint towards the playoffs. Just gotta survive the old turkey gags first from all the telly coverages. Be prepared to see tacky promos from players and their families promoted good old fashioned American Values.
Poor Mitch.
We’re now fourteen games into the NBA season for the Oklahoma City Thunder and eleven games into Steven Adams’ own campaign. That’s eleven games of evidence as to what’s going on and we’re still none the wiser.
All this weirdness I’ve been writing about, which has had the effect of eroding away the last vestiges of what this club used to stand for, has been in order to create an immediately successful basketball team. So, like, what happens now if this goes the wrong way and they tumble into irrelevance with half a season still to go?
Nah but seriously what a week. There was late drama basically across the board... eleven of the thirteen games finished within eight points and five of those were two or three point games. The drama. The chaos. The absolute carnage upon my picks.
The early days of the new NBA season were a false start for Steven Adams. Coming off the supreme touch and control he seemed to have in preseason, building up some lofty expectations, he was a shadow of himself across the first week or so as a left knee contusion clearly affected his ability to play to his capacity.
One New York quarterback saw ghosts. The other threw an idiotic interception late in the first half after a black cat had run into the endzone a few minutes earlier. The Giants were up 9-3 when the cat turned up and they went on to lose 37-18.
Steven Adams has always done the little things that help a guy like Russell Westbrook thrive. Now he has to do the thriving, which is a very exciting prospect – and one we got a delicious taste of in preseason when he was one of the most effective dudes out there across the whole NBA.
George Kittle knows what the people want. George Kittle knows what they paid good money to see.
Ah the Chargers. The Chargers who have made a precise science out of losing games they should win. I’ve seen many shockers in the past from this lot. Missed field goals, shocking interceptions, and the like. But nothing that quite compares to what they did against the Titans.
If the Wellington Phoenix get to be a work in progress, accepting their two opening defeats with encouragement because of the unique rebuilding situation they find themselves in, then the NZ Breakers get to have the same treatment too because... I mean, just look at it all.
People keep trying to talk up an MVP race with various candidates and I have to keep pointing out that there is only one candidate and it’s Russell Wilson. He’s far and away the most important and the best performing player in 2019. This is the year we’ll look back on after his career as the highlight. Like Brady in 2007 or Rodgers in 2011.