Oklahoma City Avenges Early-Season Loss to the Rockets
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma City Thunder have clearly separated themselves from the bottom rung of the NBA.
Before a smattering of fans, the Thunder (6-8) avenged their early season loss to the Houston Rockets (1-14) 101-89 inside the Paycom Center on Wednesday night.
Entering the game, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Green and Josh Giddey dominated the headlines, but it was the play of Lu Dort that turned heads.
The Canadian scored 20-plus points for the fifth straight game, a career-high, but he didn’t stop at the 20-point landmark.
Dort finished with 34 points, once again doing most of his damage in the first quarter. Eleven of Dort’s points came in the opening frame as he once again was the beneficiary of the Rockets’ defense honing in on Gilgeous-Alexander and Giddey.
“It feels great,” Dort said after the game. “Like I always say, I just got to stay confident and always take the right shots, and I feel like I’m doing a good job just attacking the rim and taking the open shots.
“I just got keep going.”
The most encouraging part of Dort’s offensive scoring streak has been the consistency at which he’s been able to get to the rim, no longer settling for out of rhythm 3-pointers and contested mid-range jumpers.
“Last game he was kind of crashing in there on his drives on a few plays,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said of Dort after the game. “… Tonight, I though the made progress there. In the lane he was not reckless at all.”
Eight of Dort’s 14 makes from the field came from inside the restricted area as Dort is finally harassing his physicality to get to the bucket in Year 3.
Riding another one of Dort’s scoring outbursts, Gilgeous-Alexander was left to hang back and pull the strings in other ways for the Thunder.
The former Kentucky guard had another off shooting night, scoring 15 points on 6-of-18 shooting, but he pulled down seven boards and dished out nine assists, falling just short of the second triple-double in his young career.
Giddey finished as the Thunder’s third-leading scorer, adding 14 points, 11 rebounds and two assists for his second career double-double.
Daigneault said he was pleased with how Giddey has worked through a bigger defensive microscope from opposing defenses after his nice start to the season.
“I thought he did a nice job of kind of hitting the gas (tonight),” Daigneault said of his Australian guard. “He was very patient and he hit the gas and he was going from slow to fast, he wasn’t like at a medium speed… His ability to play at his own pace when they’re that far off him is hard to guard.”
Oklahoma City did nice job defensively on the Rockets, limiting the damage to just 19 points from No. 2-overall pick Jalen Green.
Overall, OKC held Houston to 35.6 percent shooting from the field, and the Thunder forced the Rockets into 14 turnovers.
“I thought our intensity was good,” Daigneault said. “I thought we were really good on the glass… They have a lot of guys that want to find a shot and I thought our ball pressure and our initial help was really good tonight.”
The scariest moment of the night occurred early in the fourth quarter when OKC rookie Tre Mann took a hard spill and had to be helped off the court and taken back to the locker room. The team announced Mann suffered a right ankle sprain, and he didn’t return to the contest.
The victory wrapped up the Thunder’s four-game homestand, and the intensity is about to pick up as they head to face the defending NBA Champions.
Tip-off between the Thunder and the Milwaukee Bucks is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Friday night from the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
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