OK, Adam Silver, this has gone on long enough.
It’s time to step in and end this embarrassing, tanking farce in Oklahoma City. The Thunder are 6-16 so far, 30th in offense and 29th in net rating. The Thunder somehow already lost to the Rockets twice. Worse yet, they almost lost to the Lakers.
This after the Thunder finished last season 2-22 in their final 24 games, another piece of a blatant tanking that shows no sign of ending any time soon. They’re paying Derrick Favors $10 million to play the first four minutes of every other second quarter and Kemba Walker $27 million to not play for them at all.
All that was bad enough, but Thursday’s 152-79 loss to Memphis was the final straw, an absurdity that contained multitudes of mind-boggling numbers that had never been seen in the NBA before. Such as:
The 73-point margin of victory (an NBA record)
The -56 plus-minus by Thunder rookie Jeremiah Robinson-Earl
The +52 plus-minus by Grizzlies rookie Santi Aldama, who was taken only two picks ahead of Robinson-Earl but apparently is 108 points better.
The 15-point margin between Memphis’s bench and the Thunder’s entire team, 94-79.
