HOME OPENER
After offseason movement, Oklahoma City's home opener has different feel
Thunder fans were on hand for the first game of the season at The `Peake
Thunder owner Clay Bennett smiled as he recognized the man walking up to him outside the visiting locker room at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
“Hey ,” Bennett said to former Thunder and current Wizards coach Scott Brooks, shaking his hand with gusto.
“How are you?”
When Brooks returned to Oklahoma City Friday to face the Thunder — and beat OKC 97-85— in its home opener Friday, off season movement had limited his reunions to mostly Thunder front office members and staffers. Only two players, Steven Adams and Andre Roberson, remained f rom his tenure as head coach of the Thunder ( 2008- 2015). Paul George's trade request this summer kicked off the Thunder's roster turnover, but it also gave the Thunder its top two scorers Friday.
This year's home opener was obviously different from the last. The arena filled out as the game progressed (it was a sellout) between the Thunder (0-2) and the Wizards (1-1), but there still were scattered empty seats at the beginning of the third quarter. Last year's team would have been expected to level this Wizards squad. No such luck Friday.
Replacing George were Shai Gil geo us-Alexander and Danilo Gallinari, the two players the Thunder acquired from the Clippers in the trade. And the two players the Thunder relied on for its scoring Friday night.
Gilgeous- Alexander l ed the team with 28 points, surpassing the career-high of 26 points he set Wednesday at Utah. Gallinari was one of the Thunder' s mo stefficient shooters — begging the question of why he didn't get more shots — both on the floor and from the line. He scored his 18 points on 10 shots.
“He' s really a unique player offensively,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said of
decision, and I really admire that about him as a player.”
With the game within reach late in the fourth quarter, the Thunder called on the pair again.
Five minutes remained in the game when Donovan called a play for Gallinari. Chris Paul inbounded the ball to Adams, who swung it to Gallinari on the right wing. Gallinari's 3-point shot missed, but Terrance Ferguson rebounded the ball and threw it back out to Gallinari. This time he drained it to shrink the Wizards' lead to two points.
Washington guard Bradley Beal traveled on the other end of the floor to give the ball back to the Thunder. OKC put the ball in Gilgeous-Alexander's hands. He dribbled and probed and drained a long 2-point jumper, tying the game 83-83. He also tied his career-high with that shot.
“I don't know what I did,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the game. “It was all emotion. I barely remember it. But that was a good point in the game.”
If the Thunder could have carried that momentum through the end of the game, it would have been on the cusp of its first victory of the Thunder. But that was the peak for OKC.
The Wizards went on a 14-0 run after Gilgeous-Alexander's game-tying basket. Gallinari didn't take another and was subbed out with a little over a minute togo. Gilgeous-Alexander missed two shots.
“I know personally, I took a bad shot down that stretch,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of what the Thunder could have done better. “And I guess locking in, a couple of their shooters got loose. But we're human out there.”
Gilgeous-Alexander finally ended the Wizards' run. But he scored the layup with just 20 seconds left on the clock. It was the last shot of the game.