A power-saw.  Not something to play around with.  Any operator within three feet would be wise to use caution and wear proper ear protection.  Sunday night’s Thunder vs. Timberwolves game featured a gutsy showing by our team, and 18,163 people blithely breaking with power saw etiquette.  The crowd noise in the fourth quarter was measured at 113 decibels, which sits right between a power-saw at three feet and a sandblaster styling your hair.  We OKC fans do like our heavy machinery.

MOM, the Thunder started it!

The Thunder are now learning what the Hornets knew.  Give us a performance to latch onto, and we’ll drown the place out.  Collison’s rebounding, Westbrook’s drives, Wilcox’s follow-on jam in the third, Green’s three-pointer (We always get one per game), and an all-around stifling defense in the fourth just kept pushing it higher.

Each game, the Thunder seem to go through a similar progression.  In quarters that involve emerging from a locker room (first and third), the offense can’t get started, and the defense can’t get stops.  Our first score after the half came at around 8:45 in the third.  In the second and fourth quarters, the team seems to take on a new level of urgency, and things start clicking.  I realize point values by quarter don’t totally bear this observation out.  It’s more a fan’s sense of the team’s effectiveness and the number of possessions that end in a miss, versus those that end with sandblasting.  To this point, the “even” quarter surges have not been enough to overcome the “odd” quarter lapses.  But the T-Wolves game felt different.  It felt like a win was coming. The Thunder limited the T-Wolves to 12 points in the final quarter.  Extend that kind of hospitality to other opponents, and that’s how this team wins more games than people thought they would.

Go Thunder!