Due to me being such a massive Oklahoma City Thunder fan, as well as being a huge Steven Adams fan, I am going to include him in these articles.

There was one game today involving an Australian. Aron Baynes and the Detroit Pistons traveled to Chicago to take on the Bulls who are rebounding from back to back losses against the Milwaukee Bucks. Unfortunately for Detroit, the Bulls played the way they did at the start of the year, winning 82-113.

There is only one New Zealand player in the NBA. Steven Adams and the Oklahoma City Thunder hosted the Atlanta Hawks. In one of the games of the day, the Thunder lost 110-108

Aron Baynes

Baynes was not a huge factor in tonight’s game. Unfortunately the game was over by half time, the starters for Detroit giving up a massive lead. I am not a massive fan of the plus/minus stat being the be all and end all of a players effectiveness. However, in saying this, none of the Pistons starters had a plus/minus of better than minus 27. The game was decided by 21 points so the second unit was not responsible for the massive loss.

Baynes only played 17 minutes, scoring four points on 1-of-3 shooting. He continued his excellent form at the line by going 2-of-2. In an uncharacteristic game for Baynes, he only collected one rebound. However, the Bulls are one of the better rebounding teams in the NBA and even Andre Drummond had a slow rebounding night with only four in 23 minutes.

Baynes did collect a steal but a lot of the minutes that would have gone to Baynes went to Marjanovic in junk time to see what he could do.

Steven Adams

Adams had a difficult night tonight as he was matched up against Paul Millsap who is a player who can shoot from range. This is the type of player that Adams has struggled to guard all season all the way back to the Philadelphia 76ers game and Joel Embiid. Adams would have been better off matched up against a more tradition center in Dwight Howard who missed tonight’s game.

In saying this, Adams had a reasonable night in the 30 minutes that he played. He only scored six points on 2-of-4 shooting but when the star of the team, Russell Westbrook takes 33 shots, others are going to have less. If his last second dunk had of left his hands a split second earlier this game was going to overtime. Alas it did not.

Adams was most effective on the rebounds. He had nine boards, with four of them being at the offensive end of the court giving the Thunder more second chance opportunities. In a superb defensive effort, Adams had three steals and a block.