Thunder fall in Durant's return, and 76ers deserve to go 0-82

It’s impossible to predict the course of a NBA season, but it feels like it would at least be slightly less futile if one knew in advance which players would get hurt and, perhaps most importantly, how their teams would play without them. That second qualifier might be key, as seasons don’t just turn on which teams are unlucky enough to lose important players, but which teams are designed to survive key losses. The state of the Oklahoma City Thunder without Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook could become a cautionary tale for GMs for a long time to come.

Oklahoma City get their big guns back

Tuesday night was supposed to be Opening Night for the real Oklahoma City Thunder season as reigning MVP Durant made his regular season debut after recovering from a fractured foot he suffered during the preseason. Unfortunately for Oklahoma City, they didn’t play much better with Durant than they did without him. The Thunder fell to the New Orleans Pelicans 112-104, despite Durant scoring 27 points. The loss dropped Oklahoma City’s record to 5-13.

It feels unfair to expect Durant to come back from his foot injury and instantly lead his team to a long winning streak, but that’s really what the Thunder need to happen considering how far below .500 they’ve fallen. They were hoping that Durant’s debut would end with a result closer to the one they had when Russell Westbrook’s return from injury spurred on a 105-78 win over the New York Knicks on Friday. (OK, that was a tad bit of an easier task, given it was against, well, the Knicks.)

It feels strange to count a team out in the first week of December, but the Western Conference is simply too stacked for the Thunder to have any room for error now that Durant and Westbrook are back. Even before the Thunder fell to the Pelicans, the road ahead looked daunting. Yahoo! Sport’s Ben Rohrbach noted that even before the Pelicans game, Oklahoma City would have had to play .682 basketball just to eek out the 49 wins the Dallas Mavericks needed last season to clinch the eighth-seed in the West.

This is a lot to put on any player, especially one returning from injury. Durant can blame this nearly-impossible burden on a Thunder organization that built their entire team around the hope that their two superstar players wouldn’t get hurt at the same time.

Raptors have to survive without DeRozan

It feels like the Basketball Gods require a certain amount of balance when it comes to players’ health. While the Thunder, the team with possibly the most depressing start to the 2014-15 NBA season, were finally getting good news on the injury front, the Toronto Raptors, who hadbeen this year’s feel-good story, were taking a huge hit. Toronto guard DeMar DeRozan is out indefinitely after tearing a groin muscle in their 106-102 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Friday.

With Greivis Vasquez playing for DeRozan, the Raptors fell to the woeful Los Angeles Lakers 129-122 in overtime on Sunday, a game in which Kobe Bryant had his 20th career triple-double. These back-to-back losses, along with the knowledge that DeRozan’s return would be up in the air, account for the first true period of adversity this Raptors team has faced since establishing itself as the Eastern Conference’s best team early this season.

Beyond what he contributed to Toronto’s offense, DeRozan has always been there for the Raptors. The guard missed just 10 games over the last five seasons, and appeared in all 82 Raptors games in 2010-11 and 2012-13. While losing irreplaceable point guard Kyle Lowry would have been a bigger stumbling block for Toronto from a talent standpoint, it can’t be an easy thing for a team to lose the one player that they could always pencil into the lineup.

So the Raptors, who had everything go right for them during their 12-2 start of the season, will now have to rebound from a difficult setback. Considering the way injuries have become a major part of the NBA landscape, it almost feels like this marks the first true test of Toronto’s quest to become a legitimate championship contender. If they can keep afloat while DeRozan heals, they could be an even more dangerous team by the time he returns. Tuesday night’s 117-109 win over the Sacramento Kings was a good start.

Philadelphia 76ers continue to lose

As mentioned this time last week, the winless Philadelphia 76ers were slated to make a return appearance to this column no matter what they did. They could either win a game, which would be a newsworthy event on its own, or continue to lose, thus inching their way closer and closer towards making the wrong kind of history.

Well, Philadelphia had about as good of a chance for a win as ever on Monday night against a San Antonio Spurs team resting some of their key players, but even that gift from opposing coach Gregg Popovich wasn’t enough. San Antonio defeated Philadelphia 109-103 even without the help of Tony Parker and Tim Duncan. With their 0-17 record, the 76ers are one loss away from tying the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets for the worst start in NBA history.

It’s bigger than just that ignoble record, though. With every loss, in fact, the 2014-15 Philadelphia 76ers become even more of an existential threat to the current NBA status quo. The system essentially rewards non-competitive teams for being as bad as they possibly can in order to have the best shot at the highest draft picks. Considering that landing a LeBron James or Durant is enough to turn an entire franchise’s fortunes around, there’s often more incentive for a bad team to get worse than to attempt the much more arduous process of getting better.

These draft lottery rules may change soon, although not next year, and it may be because of the Philadelphia 76ers. It’s one thing for a team to take advantage of the current system by fielding non-competitive teams, it’s another thing to do it as openly as this Philadelphia organization has. Around the league, there are many upset at the 76ers, not really because they are tanking for the second straight year, but because they’re doing it so openly.

Every night Philadelphia put a D-League caliber lineup on the floor it’s a brazen act of disrespect. Every 76ers game is a celebration of a loophole that allows teams to get better in the long run by being absolutely terrible in the short run. It’s a form of Bizarro Basketball where losing is winning and this writer hopes it never ends. Here’s to an 0-82 season before Adam Silver and company rework the rules to prevent this from ever happening again.

Kevin Garnett pays tribute to Mike Tyson

The Chicago Bulls defeated the Brooklyn Nets 102-84 on Sunday, which wasn’t that unexpected considering that the Bulls are establishing themselves as one of the Eastern Conference’s best teams while the Nets have been mostly mediocre. What was somewhat unexpected, however, was an incident where Brooklyn’s Kevin Garnett apparently attempted to bite Chicago center Joakim Noah.

Apparently the whole thing was just in jest, at least according to Garnett:

I know how to bite somebody. Obviously I was messing around in that moment. If I wanted to bite him, I’d have just ... shout out to Mike Tyson.

The whole strange incident, however playful-in-spirit it was intended, is just the latest twist on one of the most colorful player rivalries in the league. Starting back with Garnett’s days with the Boston Celtics, these two big men have not gotten along. Perhaps it’s because they are somewhat alike: eccentric figures off the court who are notoriously super-competitive on it. Garnett also earned a technical foul during the game for throwing an elbow at Noah.

Perhaps Garnett’s behavior is getting more extreme because he knows the baton has already passed between the two. It’s very likely that 2014-15 could be Garnett’s last season and he may not even make the playoffs with the free-falling Nets (currently 7-9). Meanwhile, Noah has become the face of a resilient Chicago Bulls team (11-7) that have established themselves as maybe the toughest out in the East even without oft-injured point guard Derrick Rose.

Whatever the case, it’s probably good that Garnett didn’t connect, not only for the sake of Noah’s arm but for his own legacy. It would be a shame if the surefire Hall of Famer ended up being mostly remembered as the Luis Suarez of basketball.

Other things we’ve learned

• Grantland’s Zach Lowe explains why the Charlotte Hornets have been a disappointment so far despite making the playoffs last season and signing Lance Stephenson. My answer would just be: If you expected anything from Charlotte and/or Lance Stephenson, you deserve to be disappointed.

• The Golden State Warriors tied the Memphis Grizzlies for the best record in the Western Conference thanks to this Steph Curry three-pointer that cemented a 98-97 win over the Orlando Magic:

• Referee Joey Crawford needs to stop making himself the center of attention. Note: This is probably more of an “other things we learned a long time ago”.

• According to team president and head coach Stan Van Gundy, the Detroit Pistons, currently on a nine-game losing streak, are “really messed up right now.” OK, this might also be another thing we learned a long time ago.