It was the second night of a road back to back and it wasn’t pretty at times. But the Oklahoma City Thunder behind Russell Westbrook’s sixth straight triple double had just enough left in the gas tank to beat the sinking Atlanta Hawks by a 102-99 count Monday night in Phillips Arena.
Westbrook struggled mightily with his shot in the first half, but scored 27 second half points to cement his sixth straight triple double and eleventh of the season. It was the 48th career triple for Westbrook. Meanwhile, Kevin Durant appears to be settling in comfortably with his role player status in Oakland. Rumors have it an ESPN 30/30 movie entitled ‘The Real MVP’ might be in the works. And, yeah, this won’t be like the one on the Oxygen Channel.
OKC had double digit leads in both halves, but to the Hawks credit they fought back each time and actually had a chance to send the game to overtime at the end of regulation as a Tim Hardaway Jr. came up short.
The Thunder are still unbeaten since their coming to Jesus moment on Thanksgiving Eve when Billy Donovan finally decided he was going nowhere in a hurry with either Kyle Singler or Alex Abrines as his bench three point flamethrower. Coincide Westbrook’s six game mercurial streak with the fact Anthony Morrow’s minutes have been a fixture in these six games. It’s called space and time. As in Morrow helps create both for his fellow teammates, especially Westbrook, when he’s on the floor. Space and time. You’ll never read that on Daily Thunder, trust me.
Morrow played 25 minutes against the Hawks and was excellent scoring 15 points on a 5-8 shooting night which included 4-6 from beyond the arc. When Morrow does this the Thunder become a different animal, and a dangerous one.
Nice game by Steven Adams with a 12/10 double double. Dipo scored 14 and had a dunk over Dwight Howard which I’ll probably post tomorrow when I’m not sleepy.
Kanter went 10 and 3. Joff didn’t play much. And Semaj had five assists for the second straight game.
Like I wrote atop, it wasn’t pretty, but you take a road win on a back to back any way you can get one. Actually, I think it’s OKC’s first road back to back win of the season after failures in Detroit, Oakland, and Sacramento.
OKC improves to 14-8 and their dual for fourth in the West with Houston will get even hotter on Friday night as Harden’s Rockets visit the Peake for what will be playoff like basketball in mid December.
I can’t wait. I’ll be back tomorrow to post the Dipo dunk over Howard.
Have a pleasant evening.
LET’S GO THUNDER!