Russell Westbrook played one of his best games of the season as the Oklahoma City Thunder won their second game in a row and third in the last four by defeating the Brooklyn Nets by a 108-96 count on Wednesday night inside Chesapeake Energy Arena.
On a night when the Thunder started slowly, Westbrook was a constant source of energy on both ends of the floor while racking up his 26th triple double of the season. Westbrook’s line went 31 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists. But more importantly Westbrook’s shooting numbers continued on an uptick in the month of March as he scored the 31 points on a 12-23 shooting night. Don’t look now, but Westbrook in spite of everything which transpired in Utah is playing his best basketball of the season.
And on this night, the Thunder needed this Westbrook because the rest of the team appeared to be suffering from a Utah hangover and started the game slowly.
OKC trailed by ten at half, but finally got it going in the second half with good defense and energy by the entire team.
For the second straight game the Thunder held an opponent to under a hundred points and it appears ‘possibly’ the Thunder are getting back to playing more focused on the defensive end of the floor.
Paul George was better offensively scoring 25 points on 18 shots. This wasn’t the Paul George who was the Western Conference’s February Player of the Month, but it was better than the Paul George who’s struggled of late coming off a shoulder injury.
Steven Adams and Jerami Grant both had solid double figure nights. Dennis Schroder struggled going 3-10 from the field and the bench as a whole had a quiet offensive night.
Spencer Dinwiddie led the Nets with 25 points.
The Thunder improve to 42-26 with the win and are now tied with the Rockets for the No. 3 seed in the West with OKC currently holding the head to head tiebreaker.
Fourteen games are left for the Thunder and the math looks markedly better in as the Thunder have won three of their last four and weathered the brutal four game road swing by not losing any ground for holding on to a top four seed in the West.
In fact, if the Thunder can win eight of their remaining fourteen games the Thunder would hit the 50 win plateau in a regular season for the first time since Kevin Durant’s departure to Oakland.
So amazingly in the eye of what appeared to be to a negative feel coming out of the game in Utah where the Trump supporter shared with the world his social views on race—the Thunder are actually looking the best they’ve looked since the All-Star break.
The Thunder are back on the road tonight for one game in Indiana on the second night of a road back to back, but one would think Paul George will have some special energy playing on the floor where he started his professional career.
After the Indiana game…the Thunder host the Golden State Warriors on a special Saturday evening game on ABC.