Last year’s Charlotte Bobcats won only seven games all season, nailing down the Worst. Record. Ever. This year’s Bobcats won seven games before the end of November. It was apparently last year’s team who showed up, though, as the Thunder got out to a 54-point lead at one point and pocketed one of the easiest wins in NBA history, 114-69.
Seriously. The ‘Cats got 12 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second, and one in the third before garbage time began, inside the seven-minute mark. Imagine that for a moment: eighteen and a half minutes of garbage time. Rose Mary Woods couldn’t have topped this.
And nothing was working for Charlotte. They shot 29 percent for the night, lost the battle for the boards 54-37, were outdimed 31-12, and had exactly one player in double figures: Jeffery Taylor, with ten. The high point of their evening was seeing Thunder expat Byron Mullens hoist seven treys, two of which actually went in.
With this kind of mismatch, Eric Maynor and Hasheem Thabeet got the most minutes for OKC, and Thabeet even turned in a double-double: 13 points, ten boards. Russell Westbrook racked up 12 points and 11 assists; Kevin Durant had a game-high 18; Kevin Martin’s road to redemption was festooned with a dozen; and the treys fell like petals on Petaluma, 13 out of 27. (OKC shot a worthy 51 percent against what was almost a Charlotte defense.)
Reminder: It’s Houston on Wednesday. They’re beatable, but probably not 45-point beatable.