One of the few silver lines about this pandemic is the NBA playoffs. The first round just started yesterday and they’ve scheduled four games consecutively every day, starting at 130pm. My TV is just on one channel for the next ten hours. I love it!!!
One of the most highly anticipated first round matchups is between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets. In the offseason, the two teams traded their star point guards for each other. Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul changed teams as both teams changed philosophies. Houston, unable to get past the Golden State Warriors the previous two seasons with James Harden and Chris Paul at the helm, decided to go all in on small ball. By trading for Westbrook, they reunited him and Harden, who played together in OKC at the beginning of the decade. This history adds an extra layer of intrigue to the usually highly contested 4-5 matchup.
This got me to think of all the connections between the two teams and their players. Chris Paul spent the past two seasons with Houston. One of his teammates was Eric Gordon, whom were traded for each other back in 2011.
I delved further into the matter. I knew Harden and Westbrook played together in OKC. Looking further into those rosters, I realized that they also played together with current Rockets teammates Thabo Sefolosha and Jeff Green. The four of them could have been Thunder teammates with current Rockets teammate, Tyson Chandler, but that trade was nixed back in 2009.
So I dug into both rosters and found (hopefully) all the connections.
Mike Muscala and Dennis Schroder were teammates on the Atlanta Hawks for five years before being on OKC together. And for two of those seasons, Sefolosha was their teammate!
Chris Paul, Jeff Green, Luc Mbah a Moute, and Austin Rivers were all on the LA Clippers back in 2015-16!
That’s just some of the connections.
Here’s all that I could find as I was watching game 1 of the Rockets – Thunder. It took me the whole second half to create this!
mruvula 