OKC loses Giddey for season, game at Denver
DENVER — The Thunder winning in Denver a few weeks ago was crazy. The Thunder almost winning in Denver on Saturday was straight madness.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 29 points in that early March win. Gilgeous-Alexander (right ankle soreness) didn’t play Saturday.
Darius Bazley missed the second half Saturday with a knee sprain. Kenrich Williams, Derrick Favors and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl were all in street clothes on the bench. Josh Giddey, Lu Dort, Mike Muscala and Ty Jerome have been ruled out for the season.
And yet the Thunder, with an eightman mix of rookies and G Leaguers, took a two-point lead over Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets with three minutes to play.
Late in the fourth quarter, Aleksej Pokusevski finished a tough layup. Isaiah Roby, who had 12 points and seven rebounds, drove past Jokic for a bucket. Lindy Waters III, who scored 14 points off the bench, had a runout dunk he finished off with a loud howl.
But then came the mistakes. Tre Mann drove into traffic and missed a layup. Pokusevski threw an ill-advised lob to Roby.
Denver capitalized off of that last turnover. Nuggets guard Monte Morris called game when he cashed a 3-pointer with 48 seconds left.
The Nuggets survived the Thunder 113-107 at Ball Arena.
“I think we should be proud of the way we played,” Pokusevski said. “We were just a few plays away from the win.”
The Thunder gave the Nuggets fits this season. OKC (21-53) and Denver (44-31) split the season series 2-2.
“For whatever reason, this (Thunder) team, every time we play them, no matter who plays for them, it seems like it’s the same story every night,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said.
Injury update
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault shared two significant injury updates Saturday night before his team tipped off against the Nuggets.
First, Daigneault said that GilgeousAlexander (right ankle soreness) would not play Saturday in Denver. More notably, Daigneault said that there will be a conversation with Gilgeous-Alexander “in the next couple of days” to discuss his status for the rest of the season.
Gilgeous-Alexander missed 10 games in January and February due to a right ankle sprain. Since returning, SGA had missed just two games before Saturday — both against the Magic, a team the Thunder is competing with in the tank race.
Gilgeous-Alexander has been listed as questionable with right ankle soreness for the last several games.
“The game-to-game thing is not sustainable in terms of just in/out on a nightly basis,” Daigneault said. “We’re obviously running out of games here.”
After updating SGA’s status, Daigneault announced that Giddey (right hip soreness) is out for the rest of the season. After Saturday, the Thunder only has eight games left.
Giddey has missed the last 14 games. He played in the Thunder’s first game back from the All-Star break, but he’s been sidelined since then.
“He’s making good progress with the hip, but we’re running out of time in terms of a ramp-up, so he will be done for the year,” Daigneault said. “By the time we do a return-to-play with him and get him game-ready, we’re gonna run out of games.”
Giddey, the sixth pick in the 2021 draft, turned in a terrific rookie season. In 54 games, Giddey averaged 12.5 points, 7.8 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game.
He was a four-time Western Conference Rookie of the Month winner.
When Giddey was injured, there was little reason to think it would be seasonending, but the Thunder continued to push back his timeline.
Daigneault was asked if Giddey progressed slower than expected.
“I would not say that it met or didn’t meet an expectation,” Daigneault said.
Giddey does not have a history of hip injuries.
While Giddey and Gilgeous-Alexander are trending in the wrong direction, Daigneault said the team expects rookie center Robinson-Earl to return by season’s end.
Robinson-Earl broke a bone in his right foot in late January.
With Giddey officially ruled out, and Gilgeous-Alexander trending more out than in, the Thunder could enhance its lottery odds down the stretch.
Serbian reunion
Jokic and Pokusevski didn’t meet until last season, but the Serbian countrymen chatted like old friends before tipoff Saturday.
They sat together in courtside seats, with Pokusevski slumped in his chair and Jokic, the reigning MVP, towering over Pokusevski.
Pokusevski is from the Serbian capital of Belgrade, and Jokic is from Sombor — a city of 50,000 in the northwest corner of the country.
Pokusevski scored 17 points with five rebounds and five assists against the Nuggets.
Jokic had 35 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists. He shot 13-of-15 from the floor, and 9-of-10 from the free throw line.
The Thunder tried to junk things up against the Nuggets by playing a zone defense.
“The plan with (Jokic) is to take away the easy ones that he generates with his passing, because we think that really energizes their team,” Daigneault said. “The zone kinda made him a scorer tonight, and I thought they had to play a different way, to be honest with you, to beat us.
“They’re the better team, clearly. And when you play against a better team, you’ve gotta try to make them go to Plan B, and I thought we did that, and I thought they beat us with Plan B. Most of that was him, and that’s why he’s a great player.”
Maledon’s hot streak
Theo Maledon scored a season-high 25 points Wednesday night against the Magic. He followed that with 20 points Saturday in Denver.
Maledon shot 6-of-13 from the floor, including 2-of-4 from behind the arc. He went 6-of-6 from the free throw line.
The second-year Thunder guard was awarded his third start of the season. With Gilgeous-Alexander’s availability in question, Maledon might be a regular starter in the final two weeks of the season.
Maledon has three 20-point games this season. Last season he scored 20plus five times, including a career-high 33 points in a game against Phoenix last April.
Maledon led a balanced scoring attack Saturday. Six Thunder players scored in double figures. The Thunder shot 47% from the field, including 39% from 3-point range.
Krejci’s contest
Vit Krejci was the last line of defense as Nuggets forward JaMychal Green barrelled toward the rim.
Green can inflict damage on rims. No sane person would have blamed Krejci if he side-stepped out of the way.
But Krejci jumped, stretched his arms vertically and met Green at the rim.
The Thunder calls those plays “moments of truth.”
Krejci, putting himself at risk of posterization, met the moment on the firstquarter play.
He was whistled for a defensive foul, but Krejci asked the Thunder’s bench to challenge the play.
Daigneault called for the review, and the Thunder won the challenge.
Instead of Green shooting two free throws, there was a jump ball at center court.
“When those guys tell us to look at it, we take them seriously,” Daigneault said.
During rough times, individual plays like that one stand out.
Krejci had seven points, six assists and four rebounds in 28 minutes off the bench.