FYI, I made up the part about him feeling like a rookie. It just seemed to fit so well. Here is the actual quote. Why can't someone like Tay use the excuse that he is surrounded by poor talent and it is impacting his play?
Didn't watch this one, but just looked at the box score and was surprised to see that Daye was our leading rebounder in only 19 minutes of "action". He was tied with Monroe and 2nd only to Iblocka in the game. By the way, Ibaka had 5 blocks and as a team we were out blocked 10 to 1... Was it our guards letting blocked? Nope. Monroe got blocked twice, Jerebko twice, Daye twice, Maxiell once, Macklin once, Tay once, and Stuckey somehow shows up on the list too. Assuming that our bigs were going to make those shots, the Thunder lowered our shooting percentage by about 12% with the unfair use of their arms. And of course Stuck's bagel also stuck out on the assist column. On the boards, Monroe had 5 offensive and 2 defensive rebounds. How do Stuckey, Knight, and Wilkins all get more defensive rebounds than Monroe? I guess there were only 36 missed shots by the Thunder, so getting 27 of them wasn't terrible for us. Maybe Monroe was doing a good job boxing out and enabled our guards to secure the ball. If so, nice hustle on both parts. Assists- Russell tying for the lead! That's no small accomplishment for him- living out his dream. 0-5 shooting though- how does his form look? Harden- 5 for 6 from deep and +32 on the night. In only 26 minutes against us, Ibaka had his season high in rebounds, assists, and blocks. Nice work.
Monroe got blocked by Ibaka on his first(?) shot attempt on a nice play where he came from the weak side to help Perkins out. Monroe shot a turnaround J, this wasn't a play from early last year where he kept getting stuffed under the rim. It seemed that after that happened Monroe shot his next 4-5 shots with the purpose of not getting blocked instead of scoring.
