ROUGH START, GREAT FINISH
San Antonio Spurs, New Orleans Pelicans, Oklahoma City Thunder are all into the playoffs; 1 spot left in Western Conference race
Monday started with four spots available out West, and ended with only one still unclaimed. New Orleans, San Antonio and Oklahoma City all won to clinch their playoff berths:
The Pelicans beating the LA Clippers, 113-100; the Spurs defeating the Sacramento Kings and Oklahoma beating the Miami Heat, 115-93.
The funny part about Monday’s triple-clinchings is that nothing changed in the standings. The order of the top eight remains the same, going into the next-to-last day of the regular season.
For the Oklahoma City Thunder, clinching night was reminiscent of their season.
Really bad start.
Really good finish.
Paul George scored 27 points, Russell Westbrook got his 25th triple-double of the season and the Thunder ran wild in the fourth quarter on the way to wrapping up a Western Conference playoff berth with a 115-93 win over the Miami Heat on Monday night.
“Half the league gets a chance to play in the postseason,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “You don’t want to take things for granted. They should feel good about creating an opportunity to play after the regular season’s over, but the thing I said to them after the game was we want to continue to play well, we want to continue to build, we want to continue to get better.”
That’s what Oklahoma City did all season. They started 8-12, are 39-22 since and got road wins over Houston and Miami in a three-day span to clinch the berth.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” said George, who walked off a winner in Miami for the third time in 21 appearances. “This is what we wanted. We wanted to come out of this road trip 2-0 and we did that.”
Westbrook finished with 23 points, 18 rebounds and 13 assists for the Thunder, who missed their first 10 shots and were down by 18 in the opening minutes before outscoring the Heat 39-12 in the fourth.
It was the third-worst scoring margin for any quarter in Heat history, and the worst ever in a game at Miami.
The Heat were called for 10 fouls in the fourth against three for the Thunder, and Oklahoma City shot 15 free throws in the final quarter — one more than Miami shot in the entire game.
“We had a lot of good things going, and then I think it was a combination of them marching to the free-throw line and us not executing on the other end,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
Jerami Grant scored 17 points and Carmelo Anthony added 11 for Oklahoma City, which made 14 3-pointers. Anthony will be playing in postseason games for the first time since 2013, after four consecutive futile seasons with the Knicks.
“Feels good to be back in the postseason and the mindset of not looking forward to another vacation,” Anthony said. /