It’s only two games into their season and the Oklahoma City Thunder have to face their worst-case scenario. Already forced to play without Kevin Durant, the Thunder now may have lost point guard Russell Westbrook for four to six weeks after he suffered a right hand injury in Thursday night’s 93-90 loss to the Clippers at Staples Center.
Westbrook appeared to have injured his right hand in the second quarter while attempting to catch a rebound. Shortly afterwards, a clearly upset Westbrook headed back to the locker room, but not before getting into a heated verbal exchange with a Clippers fan.
The injury was diagnosed as a small fracture of the second metacarpal. According to Darnell Mayberry of the Oklahoman: “Projected recovery time would cost Westbrook 15 games on the low end and as many as 21 contests. He would rejoin the lineup between November 28 and December 12.”
When Durant was diagnosed with a foot fracture earlier this month, the Thunder looked like they could survive the loss of a star player better than most teams. Part of the luxury of having the double-headed monster of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, both top 10 players in the league, was that both were capable of carrying the team as aNo1 option if necessary. Durant did just that last year, raising his game to MVP levels when Westbrook was sidelined with knee injuries.
Westbrook was primed to do the samethis year. In fact, he scored 38 points in the Thunder’s 106-89 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. A Thunder team that had aspirations of being the top seed in their conference when the pre-season began now faces radically different prospects with both Durant and Westbrook out for at least a month.
The Thunder have already started off their season 0-2 and now will have to stay afloat with Serge Ibaka as their sole established all-star caliber player. With Westbrook gone, Perry Jones ended up being Oklahoma City’s top scorer and Sebastian Telfair, who many basketball fans had probably assumed was out of the league, had to fill in at point guard. None of this should inspire any confidence among Thunder fans.
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) October 31, 2014What will OKC look like without Kevin Durant & Russell Westbrook? Here's an idea of how they would've been last year: pic.twitter.com/44qXWPUgS7
Maybe this wouldn’t have been a major blow if the Oklahoma City Thunder were not in a particularly brutal Western Conference. A full month without the two stars that normally account for the majority of their offense could sink a team fighting with a murderer’s row of talented teams including the reigning champion Spurs, the “under new ownership” Clippers and the James Harden-led Rockets.
The Thunder, though, can’t afford to even think about these long-term implications . Currently, the Thunder might not even have enough players to cobble together a workable NBA team, as they may only have a grand total of eight active players left. Besides Durant, the Thunder have been playing without Reggie Jackson (ankle sprain), Jeremy Lamb (back sprain), Anthony Morrow (MCL sprain), Grant Jerrett (ankle injury) and Mitch McGary (foot fracture).
The Thunder have 15 out of 15 possible roster spots guaranteed, which means they don’t have any room to add an active player at the moment. Expectations are that the Thunder will apply for a hardship exemption from the league that would allow them to sign an extra player before their Saturday night game against the Denver Nuggets.
Whoever they would get would just be a body, however, and would not address Oklahoma City’s major problem: even with a completely healthy bench, this was a team completely built around the offense of two irreplaceable players. Now they will somehow have to tread water without both of them for an extended period of time.
This is the doomsday scenario this organization hoped would never happen when they traded offensive powerhouse Harden to Houston back in 2012. Without Westbrook and Durant, the Thunder have to hope that fill-in players keep the team at least contending and that, when they return, they suffer no further health setbacks. If not, the Oklahoma City Thunder could be playing catch-up all season long.
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