OKC Blue No. 1 seed
Dakari Johnson and his Oklahoma City Blue teammates are the No. 1 seed for the NBA D-League Western Conference playoffs. The Blue will open a best-of-3 series at Santa Cruz on Wednesday, and then return to the Cox Center to host Game 2 on Saturday and Game 3, if necessary, on April 10.
After missing the last game against the Spurs with an undisclosed illness,
Taj Gibson was reinserted into the starting lineup, but only played 13 minutes in the Thunder’s 113-101 loss Sunday to Charlotte. Thunder coach Billy
Donovan didn’t want to speak for Gibson, but thought the 6-foot-9 forward “didn’t have the same kind of pop” to start the third quarter.
Gibson started the game with four points, two rebounds and a block in the first 7½ minutes, altering several shots as Charlotte’s three-man frontcourt missed its first seven attempts.
After halftime, however, Gibson started with two turnovers in the first three Thunder possessions, the beginning of Charlotte’s game-breaking 13-0 run.
Donovan went away from Gibson in favor of Jerami
Grant.
“We just tried to use Jerami a little bit and tried to play a little bit smaller and switch (defenders),” Donovan said.
“We dug ourselves such a big hole I just thought maybe we could find something a little bit different.”
Gibson finished with the worst plus/minus on the Thunder. OKC was outscored by 14 points with Gibson in the game.
OKC bench blasted
Charlotte’s Jeremy Lamb swished a jumper over the outstretched hand of Doug
McDermott and gave a look at the Thunder sideline. He started to jog back on defense. He looked back again.
The former Thunder guard peeled away from
Alex Abrines via a screen and squared up former teammate Enes Kanter. The 6-11 Kanter tried to stick with Lamb, but Lamb faded away and banked in a left wing jumper.
“It was the guys coming off the bench that really got the cushion there early in the fourth quarter,” Hornets coach Steve Clifford said.
Lamb was a microcosm of the game’s bench imbalance, which started earlier than his eight-point flurry in the fourth. The Thunder’s loss was heavily on the starters’ shoulders in the Hornets’ run to start the third, but the bench’s slow start didn’t help.
The Thunder’s reserves were outscored 44-24. Until Domantas Sabonis hit a 3-pointer in the second quarter, the Hornets’ bench was outscoring the Thunder’s 12-0. The Thunder bench missed its first nine shots. Lamb (13 points) and Frank
Kaminsky (18) combined to outscore the Thunder bench.
Kanter struggled, in particular. Russell Westbrook stood up off the bench in third beckoning for Kanter to move toward the ball rather than let the pass come to him.
Kanter finished with a bench-high nine points but wasn’t his usual efficient self against Charlotte’s congesting defense. He started 0-of-4 before hitting his first basket with 1:02 left in the third quarter.
The lone bright spots: Grant and Sabonis combined to shoot 3-of-3 from 3. Abrines and McDermott went 0-of-5.
Blue No. 1 seed … on the road
The D-League Oklahoma City Blue wrapped up its regular season as the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference with a 115-96 win over the Texas Legends on Saturday.
The Blue (34-16) starts the first round of the playoffs against the Santa Cruz Warriors on Wednesday (8:30 p.m., ESPNU), but will do so on the road. In the D-League, the first round is a best-of-3 series, with the wild card team hosting the first game. The division winner, in this case the Blue, hosts the second game, and a third game if necessary.
Game 2 is Saturday at 7 p.m., and Game 3 (if necessary) is April 10 (7 p.m.), both at the Cox Convention Center. Both games will air on News9 Plus (Cox channel 52) and Facebook Live.
Tip-ins
Westbrook is the first player in NBA history with a streak of five consecutive triple-doubles with 30 points or more. Oscar Robertson had the previous record with four in 1961. … Victor
Oladipo had 19 points, but he limped off late in the fourth quarter after banging knees with a Hornets player. “I’m OK now,” Oladipo said in postgame.