OKC Thunder 110 — Denver Nuggets 104
OKC’s Thunder were a little bit of everything Tuesday night in Denver as they won their fifth straight game of the season over the Nuggets to improve to 31-12 for the season.
It wasn’t particularly an impressive performance, nor a horrible one, but rather a nondescript NBA road win where basically Durant, Westbrook, and on this night Enes Kanter, were the major clogs as OKC did enough to tame the Denver Nuggets.
Combined–the two stars plus Kanter scored 82 of OKC’s points and were enough even though the rest of the OKC roster scored only 28 points. It went Durant 30 points, Westbrook 27 points, and Kanter with 25 points in 25 minutes of play.
I think I’ll go Enes Kanter as my No. 1 Star of the Game because he and Kyle Singler were basically it for OKC’s bench tonight.
Depending on whether you’re a glass half full or half empty type—OKC won on the road tonight with Serge Ibaka, Dion Waiters, and rookie Cam Payne shooting a combined 4-27 from the field. That in itself tells you how good Durant and Westbrook are, and how completely mediocre Denver is in the same compact paragraph.
Dion Waiter’s three game streak of good games came tumbling back down to earth as he went 2-10 with three turnovers. A complete microcosm of Waiters’ not only in OKC, but in the NBA. If you can visualize Ibaka, Waiters, and Payne out playing and out thinking Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, and Shawn Livingston in a seven game series without home court advantage then there must be something I’m not seeing big picture.
But still, OKC is improving as far as overall ball movement goes as it notched another thirty assist game as a team. Even though, I’d still grade this one as nothing more than a road win against a 16-26 team which is the current No. 11 seed in the West.
Kyle Singler continued his modest string of positive games with 7 points and 4 rebounds off the bench.
Danilo Gallinaro and Kenneth Faried led Denver with 27 and 17 points.
OKC is now 20-4 in its last twenty four games and 28-8 when Kevin Durant plays. But keep this in mind, Golden State has both Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala as Durant hounders, and the Spurs have a guy named Kawhi Leonard as well to shadow No. 35. Kevin Durant and Russell aren’t good enough to beat the Warriors or Spurs with only part of OKC’s roster contributing.
So for the pragmatic crowd, me included, OKC didn’t take a step forward or backwards tonight–just sideways, and if you witnessed the Golden State dismantling of Cleveland last night there’s a fairly good chance Durant, Westbrook, and sideways won’t be enough in a six or seven game series if it ever comes to that.
Mike Jackson