The Kiwi basketball star is out with concussion and he missed the Thunder’s 120-98 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday (NZ Time).
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The Clippers are now the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference with a record of 29-14. Heralded by some, including Draymond Green, as the best big man in the league, Cousins is averaging 28.1 points and 10 rebounds on a team that is going nowhere anytime soon.
Since the 2015-2016 season, the Clippers are 3-9 in games without both Paul and Griffin.
LOS ANGELES The players on the Clipper bench, the ones who saw their playoff dreams shatter in a matter of minutes a season ago, were immediately taken back to that heart-sinking place.
While Westbrook posted a 20-point, 10 assist double-double in the defeat, he only shot 4-15 from the field (.267%) and committed six turnovers.
The Clippers outscored the Thunder 24-6, including nine points by Speights and six by Redick, to take a 22-point lead in the second. As he rehabs, three games will come against the Warriors, and one is against the Spurs.
“We weren’t ready to play and we didn’t play good defence and they were more physical than us”, Westbrook said.
The Thunder (25-18) have stayed afloat and are tied for sixth in the Western Conference.
Another early playoff exit would be a bitter pill for Paul, who has famously never gotten so far as the conference finals in his career.
So what do they do?
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Durant said they’re still very much a unsafe team that can not be taken lightly. While they could understandably decide to hit reset, the other option may be a lengthy rebuild, similar to what the Brooklyn Nets are going through – scraping the bottom barrels of free agency while waiting for their draft picks to reset. They have their first rounder in 2018 and second rounder in 2019. The sample size of Griffin’s missed time over last season certainly hurts determining both development with teammates on the court and pulling declarative statements of what’s possible in an offense centered around him. Then the Hawks pulled Howard and Paul Millsap off the trading block, but they can always revisit those in the coming weeks.
