Schroder still providing scoring bursts
It must have been deja vu for the Magic. Thunder point guard Dennis Schroder beckoned to Paul George from the top of the arc. George didn't move, but the signal did enough to catch Orlando's Terrance Ross off guard when Schroder darted toward the rim. He drove past Ross to score his 20th point of the game, three minutes into the fourth quarter Wednesday. In each of the Thunder's past five games, Schroder has gone through scoring sprees of 10-plus points in 12 minutes or less. Orlando suffered two of those runs. First, Schroder scored 18 points in the fourth quarter of the Thunder's 126-117 win last week at Orlando. Then on Tuesday, Schroder scored seven baskets in a span of seven minutes. “That's what great players do,” Thunder guard Hamidou Diallo said Wednesday after practice. “Dennis is a great player, and he's playing his role really well. And then he gets going, not a lot of people can stop him.” Schroder's second-half burst in the Thunder's 132-122 win over the Magic Tuesday didn't match the volume of his 24-point second quarter in Miami. Its timing was what made it impressive. When Schroder reentered the game with four and a half minutes left in the third quarter Tuesday, the Thunder trailed the Magic 87-83. By the time he subbed out halfway through the fourth quarter, OKC had a 10-point lead.
`New school'
Thunder rookie Diallo raised an eyebrow when a reporter tried to describe his aversion to props in the NBA dunk contest as “old school.” “New school,” Diallo said. Diallo remained secretive about his approach to the 2019 AT&T Slam Dunk Wednesday, the day after the NBA announced him as one of four participants. The skills challenge will take place on Feb. 16, the night before the All-Star Game. Diallo didn't share any of the advice his teammates had given him. He said he had come up with a few dunks he was considering but he still needed to be creative. What the 20-year-old was clear about, however, was that he was part of a “new school” movement. His favorite dunker is Zach Lavine, 23, who won the contest in 2015 and 2016. Diallo said he hasn't been searching YouTube for clips of old school participants. “No disrespect to them,” he said, “but the dunks they used to do then are not in style anymore. People have seen those kinds of dunks in games and stuff like that, so you can't really bring that to a contest. So you've got to be really creative and really use the internet to your advantage.” Diallo is set to face Charlotte's Miles Bridges, Atlanta's John Collins and New York's Dennis Smith Jr.. All four contestants are under 22 years old.