
Just what the Oklahoma City Thunder needed: another injury to one of their best players. [DraftKings: FREE entry to huge cash Fantasy Basketball Contest with first deposit ] After starting the first 64 games of the 2014-15 season, power forward Serge Ibaka has missed the last two — Friday night’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves and Sunday’s matinee victory over the Chicago Bulls — with what the team had termed a sore right knee. After a few days of monitoring the situation, the Thunder have determined that Ibaka needs to go under the knife to address the problem, according to ESPN.com’s Royce Young : [Ibaka] will see a specialist for further evaluation, with the expectation for him to have a clean-out procedure in order to be ready for the postseason. The Thunder have not confirmed that Ibaka will undergo the surgery, saying in a statement Monday that they have sent him to a specialist. “As we continue to monitor and evaluate the soreness in Serge’s knee, in consultation with his representation, we decided the next best step is to have him travel to New York to see a specialist,” a team spokesman said. “We will provide an update as appropriate.” Young reports that it’s not yet clear how long Ibaka will be sidelined following the “clean-out,” which is obviously a pretty big problem, as the Thunder can ill afford to spend too much time down the stretch without their best interior defender as they also continue to work without injured MVP Kevin Durant and attempt to fend off Anthony Davis’ New Orleans Pelicans for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Thunder enter Monday’s action in eighth place at 37-29, one full