Oklahoma City Chokes Away 22-Point Lead, Free Agent-to-be Kevin Durant Sounds Ready to Go

Oklahoma City, so desperate to retain free agent Kevin Durant, are playing like hot garbage since the All-Star break, and Wednesday’s choke job against the Clippers is their worst performance yet.

After leading by 20 at halftime, and up by 16 with 7:30 left in the game, the Thunder permitted a 26-5 run to the Clippers to end the game and lost on the road, 103-98. Oklahoma City might be 42-19 on the season, but they’re 2-5 since the All-Star break and have shown the inability to close out games, losing 4th quarter leads against the Pacers, Warriors and now Clippers.

Reminder: Kevin Durant is a free agent at season’s end. Reminder: NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski came on my radio show two weeks ago and made it clear: Durant wants a Championship, and he’ll make a free agent decision based on his ability to capture said title.

Durant scored 30 points in defeat Wednesday, but it took him 27 shots and he had six turnovers. Perhaps trying too hard in the 4th, he struggled in the final minutes – and remember, he threw the late pass against the Golden State in the closing seconds (though the Thunder did have a timeout) – and understandably peeved speaking to the media. Here’s what he said after the loss:

"“Just no discipline. Playing too loose. We’re fooling ourselves if we want to be a great team the way that we’re playing. We’re fooling ourselves.” “We lost too many games this year we supposed to win. We can’t keep talking about wake-up calls… We just gotta be locked in from the beginning, from shootaround. You’ve gotta think about the game of basketball, think about what you gonna do tonight, from shootaround all the way to the end of the game. And if you don’t do that, then talent is going to take over sometimes but more times than not, the better teams are going to take advantage.” “We can talk about this, talk about that, but it don’t matter,” Durant said. “We gotta dig down deep and just stay disciplined, man. Throughout the whole game. That’s from the top to the bottom. Everybody, from the guys on the bench to the coaches to the players. Everybody.”"

It’s only been a week – and the Thunder have been through tragedy, with the tragic death of assistant coach Monty Williams’ wife, and Wednesday the strange death of minority owner Aubrey McClendon – but with 21 games left in the season and the playoffs, Oklahoma City is running out of time to keep Kevin Durant.

Oh, and they host the Warriors tonight on TNT.