When you’re coming off a bad two game road swing on which the wheels fell off, the best remedy is a home game against a struggling team with lots of youth. Enter the Phoenix Suns on early Saturday evening for a feel good game inside Chesapeake Energy Arena for an easy coast to coast 114-101 win.
For the third straight game, Victor Oladipo sat with a sprained right wrist. But unlike the two bad losses which came on the road against Portland and Utah, Billy Donovan made a significant change. That being, he started Anthony Morrow and returned Jerami Grant to his bench role and it worked beautifully as Morrow hit 4 of 6 shots, scored 11 points, and created never ending space in the basketball highway referred to as the paint. OKC literally owned the paint on Saturday evening. Jerami Grant did his part as well he displayed his usual array of athletic plays coming off the bench. But to me at least, the key to this game was the space in which Westbrook and Adams operated their two man game all night long.
Westbrook and Adams were superb. Westbrook first. After going three straight games without a triple double, Westbrook decided to create shots for teammates instead of shooting the ball and it worked to perfection as he garnered a career high 22 assists on the night. Westbrook’s night read 26 points, 11 rebounds, and the 22 assists which are a Thunder record. It was Westbrook’s 50th career triple and puts him in sixth place on the career triple double list.
Now Steven Adams. Steven Adams has a nice little run of games going himself if you haven’t noticed. Against the Suns he scored 19 points and grabbed 7 boards. In his last six games he’s 50% from the field and averaging just a hair under 16 points a game. This is more in line with the Steven Adams we witnessed trending in last year’s post season and what the Thunder need of him on a consistent basis post Durant. When the Thunder combine Oladipo and Payne to this level of play from Westbrook and Adams it should be a much more fluid offensive team to watch.
Enes Kanter and Andre Roberson scored in double figures as well.
Semaj Christon was serviceable with 7 points in 15 minutes. Kyle Singler and Alex Abrines both played, ran around quite a bit and did a lot of nothing but it appears Billy Donovan is doing all he can to bolster their confidence with some playing time which in all candor neither have earned to date.
For the second straight game–Nick Collison played a role and Jofferey Lauvergne didn’t as Collison had a Collisonesque night with 7 points, 2 rebounds and seemed to have a settling effect on OKC’s very young bench. I love Nick Collison so you’ll never hear me bitch about Collison playing and one of the pups observing from the bench. But from my perspective the two pups sitting sgould be Singler and Abrines and not Lauvergne. We’ll keep an eye on this or maybe Donovan is just doing what all good hockey coaches by motivating his third line players to show some reason they should be getting ice time so to speak.
OKC improves to 16-11 and remains one full game behind the Utah Jazz for first place in the Northwest Division.
All in all it was a fun night inside the Peake as the Thunder won easly, Craig Sager was honored, Nick Collison made us remember why we love him so much, and OKC television play by play man Brian Davis donned a Thunder jacket I’d die to have in my Thunder wardrobe.
Atlanta in town on Monday night. Hope I can find that jacket to buy myself for Christmas. It’s trending No. 1 on my x-mas list as I close this recap.