Westbrook, Thunder Win 4th Straight in Miami

Victor Oladipo missed his eighth straight game and it didn’t even remotely matter as Russell Westbrook continued his mission statement season in a Thunder 106-94 win over the punchless Miami Heat at American Airlines Arena on Monday night.

OKC came out fast in the first period with a 33-19 avalanche which featured some beautiful overall play by the Thunder. The ball moved, multiple Thunder players finished, and the game was in essence over after the first twelve minutes.

Westbrook recorded his 15th triple double of the season and 52nd of his career. He’s averaging a triple double for the season thirty-two games in and becomes the first player since Allen Iverson in 2000-01 to pass the 1,000 point plateau this early in a season. As a Thunder fan/blogger, it’s especially fun to witness Russell Westbrook and James Harden dueling it out for the MVP. Anyone who doubts Sam Presti’s ability to evaluate college talent needs to give it up at this point.

Westbrook’s numbers on Tuesday night were 29 points, 17 rebounds (all defensive), and 11 assists of which ten came in the first half. Westbrook closed with 11 of his points coming in the fourth period as he closed the road win… while of course as we all too well know around here (sigh)…Kevin fell down again and didn’t even get a shot off. Thanks, Kyrie. Thanks, Richard.

The Stache Brothers were once again good as Steven Adams went for 15 and 8 while Enes Kanter went 19 and 8. OKC scored 56 points in the paint and scored 16 fast break points.

As has been the norm in these four straight wins, the Thunder bench was excellent scoring 46 points and getting some very solid contributions from Alex Abrines and Jerami Grant. Abrines scored 14 points as the Thunder’s primary three point weapon going 4-7 from beyond the arc. Jerami Grant scored 9 points, made all four of his free throws and for the month of December is around 77% from the line.

Andre Roberson scored one point. Spoelstra appeared torn if he wanted to go the Hack Andre route and in hindsight he probably should have tried it more than the one time he did. But I’m guessing he didn’t because he’d have had too spend more time watching his own feeble team play. My obscure, meaningless stat for the night is that Andre Roberson and Kyle Singler played a combined 32 minutes and scored 1 point between them in a game against a pretty bad NBA team. By my count, Anthony Morrow scored all nine of his points in the third period.

If you take a peak at the NBA standings, OKC has jumped back up to the No. 5 seed in the West and currently is back in first place in the Northwest Division.

As soon as Oladipo returns you would figure OKC’s bench will be even more vibrant. I’m not going to speculate if and when Payne returns, but it will be exciting when they return because both are lottery picks Billy Donovan will have at his disposal to add to the mix of his team.

An exciting time to be a Thunder fan and has been the norm pretty much the past eight years, the Oklahoma Thunder are young, talented, and fun to watch which are all a direct result of Sam Presti understanding the multiple challenges of general managing in a small market such as Oklahoma City.

The Thunder at Memphis on Thursday night.

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