Almost out of nowhere, Abdel Nader is starting to contribute a little bit for the Thunder. Not a big bit, but a little bit. And I hope Thunder fans are pleased with this, because he needs a little loving after the Celtics traded him for almost nothing (this was part of the “Rodney Purvis gets traded 10 times offseason spectacular”) and their fans were happy about it.
Here’s a fun stat for you depraved statheads out there, desperately scouring the internet for your stat fix: according to basketball-reference, Abdel Nader’s 15-point performance against the Spurs had the same value (as calculated by “Game Score”) as Russell Westbrook’s 24/10/7 game. Game Score really likes it when you only do good things (boxscore numbers) and no bad things (missed shots, turnovers, fouls). In this one, Nader didn’t do anything “bad”, while Westbrook is pretty much the king of doing bad things. Just putting it out there as a fun little tidbit. Wasn’t that fun?
Nader’s now 10-for-10 from the field in his last two games. I can’t speak for last game, but in this one he just drove in from the perimeter, tried to get as close to the basket as he could, and tried to put the ball in. A good strategy, if a little simplistic. Somehow, it worked. I don’t know how, because he wasn’t really creating any openings, more like just bullying his way in with his strength, but now we get to enjoy these hard-earned layups.