NBA scores 2016: The Thunder can’t prove anything in the regular season

Oklahoma City picked up another solid win against a West playoff team, so why does it feel so boring?

Jan 30, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

There's really nothing the Oklahoma City Thunder can do that's impressive anymore.

They won Friday, pulling away late from the Houston Rockets, a fellow West playoff team, to secure a 116-108 victory. That final score pushed them to 36-13, staying firmly planted both as the No. 3 seed in the conference and the No. 3 team in the NBA, with a winning percentage just a couple ticks higher than the Cleveland Cavaliers. But despite Russell Westbrook's manic triple-double, and despite Kevin Durant's 33 points on a systematically destructive 18 shots, it all feels so bland, so predestined. This is just what the Thunder do -- win a whole bunch of Western Conference games -- before falling short of a title somewhere in May.

It's the fate of playing in the same conference as two historically great teams, which both have championship pedigrees. There's the reigning champion Warriors, on a path to achieving the greatest regular season ever. The San Antonio Spurs aren't far behind, and they won the title the year before that -- plus four more strewn throughout the past decade and a half. The Thunder aren't rising stars or an emerging powerhouse, they're just the Thunder, a team we've seen in the playoffs for the past five years now. If it hasn't happened in five years, why would it happen now? That's what it feels like, anyway. Durant and Westbrook could be playing the best basketball of their career -- they basically are -- but they've lost the attention of their audience.

Oklahoma City shouldn’t have a problem with that, mind you. Their superstars already have public spats with the media, so inattention to their regular season success will be just more of the same in the eyes of Durant and Westbrook. Unless the Thunder actually catch up to San Antonio, why would they deserve more attention? They’re playing incredible basketball, with the second-best offense and a defense just outside the top-10 in defensive rating, but a top-four seed in the Western Conference isn’t a new thing for this team. Until they prove otherwise, Oklahoma City is merely the challenging but solvable sudoku puzzle San Antonio or Golden State must solve on the direct flight to the Western Conference Finals showdown that we’re all expected between those two behemoths.

Whatever, says the Thunder. They know they still haven't lost a playoff series when the trio of Westbrook, Durant and Serge Ibaka were all healthy for the entire stretch. They know their bench is still a weakness, but maybe not as bad as it was with new additions and Billy Donovan deploying them instead of Scotty Brooks. On Friday, Enes Kanter scored 22 points in 26 minutes on 16 shots while Dion Waiters chipped in 16, nailing six of his nine field goal attempts. Could they hold up against Golden State or San Antonio?

Eventually, though, it all comes back to how far Durant and Westbrook can take this team. Those two steering the Thunder to another high seed in the West isn’t interesting anymore, not in a big picture sort of way. We know they can do that, so the attention gravitates to the potentially budding dynasty in Golden State and the other dynasty in San Antonio not yet ready to give up without a fight. Now, for Oklahoma City to force the world to notice them, it will require a playoff moment. And as good as this team is, that still might be too much to ask for.

3 more things from Friday

This is the Parsons the Mavericks gave $46 million

Scoring 19 points to go with 10 rebounds, Chandler Parsons piloted Dallas to a 91-79 win against the Brooklyn Nets on Friday. It was the fifth time in six games that Parsons has led the team in scoring and a continuation of the forward's best stretch possibly as a Maverick and certainly since returning from minor hybrid microfracture surgery on his knee last summer.

It's been a long road back for Parsons, who dealt with gradually less prohibitive minute restrictions through 2015 before those were finally lifted around Christmas. Although both he and Rick Carlisle are hesitant to say he's 100 percent recovered, you couldn't notice with the way Parsons has been playing. In his last six games, Parsons is averaging 24 points on 58-percent shooting, while knocking down 57 percent of his triples. Carlisle has made him the primary backup power forward, staggering his minutes so Dirk Nowitzki subs out early, and any rebounding concerns have so far been nullified by Parsons nabbing 7.5 per game in that six-game stretch. There's still room to increase his usage in the offense and subsequently his playmaking, but after questions about his surgery lingered, everyone's just happy to see Parsons find a groove again.

Kidd-Gilchrist makes a sharp return

After first undergoing surgery on his shoulder this preseason, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist's return to the Charlotte Hornets wasn't expected until after the All-Star break and maybe even into March. That return date was slowly but surely moved up as his work ethic and recovery helped him back into playing shape, and on Friday, Kidd-Gilchrist made his season debut in a 109-91 road loss.

Despite the loss, Charlotte has to be happy about Kidd-Gilchrist's return. The three-year pro, drafted second overall in 2012, opened up his season with a 13-point performance, hitting five of his eight shots and grabbing seven rebounds. In an 18-point loss, Kidd-Gilchrist was only a minus-2, with his defense helping slow down the high-powered Trail Blazers offense, at least until the final minutes of the game. There's sure to be a learning curve as the Hornets and Kidd-Gilchrist get used to each other once again, but for his debut, Kidd-Gilchrist couldn't have played much better than Friday.

Karl-Anthony Towns' biggest enemy is himself

Or something like that. Despite a career-high 32 points on Friday, Towns blamed himself for Minnesota's 103-90 loss to the Jazz and said he "played like crap."

Here's the full KAT quote. pic.twitter.com/Pps9R494XN
— Aaron Falk (@tribjazz) January 30, 2016

It's bluntly worded and not completely true, of course -- scoring 32 points on 13-of-17 shooting while nabbing 12 rebounds isn't "crap." But defensively, Towns did struggle, with Derrick Favors scoring 20 points on 16 shots and numerous other Jazz players making it to the basket unopposed. There's no reason for Towns, having a fringe All-Star season as only a rookie, should feel like this is anything but a learning curve in his development. Seeing him upset just shows his competitiveness and what exactly the Timberwolves have in the budding superstar.