Oklahoma City Thunder ease past San Antonio Spurs 107-93 to win their 11th straight: NBA Recap
The Oklahoma City Thunder have the best record in the league this season thanks to their longest winning streak in sixteen years. They improved it by one on Monday night when they dropped the hot San Antonio Spurs 107-93 at the Chesapeake Energy Arena, extending their streak to 11 games.
Serge Ibaka had a monstrous game. He led the Thunder with a career high 25 points to go along with 17 rebounds and 3 blocks. Russell Westbrook had 22 points and 9 assists, Kevin Martin came off the bench to add 20 points, going 3 of 5 from distance, while Kevin Durant finished off with 19 points.
"Our standards are high and their standards are high, we wanted to play well tonight and I thought we did” Thunder head coach Scott Brooks commented.
Tony Parker scored 14 points and handed out 7 assists, Tim Duncan had 12 points while Tiago Splitter had 10 points for the Spurs who shot 45.6 percent from the field.
Ibaka made his intentions clear to the Spurs when he made two back to back jumpers early in the first period. San Antonio were up 16-10 before Ibaka scored 6 straight points to tie the score. Martin knocked down two from downtown to put Thunder up 30-23 before Daniel Green connected one from distance at the buzzer to leave the Spurs trailing by 26-30 at the end of the quarter.
The second period had a similar pattern with the Thunder in front but not being allowed to pile a major advantage throughout. Oklahoma City were up 53-48 at the end of the first half.
It was all Thunder in the third quarter. Although it was still a three point game on 52-55 early in the period but the Thunder started pulling ahead quickly. An 11-0 run pushed their lead to 71-56 with 4:28 to go in the quarter. They kept on pressing though and were leading 82-64 by the end of the period.
Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was extremely displeased by his team efforts in the third period. He said
“We had 15 assists in the first half and two in the third quarter and we stopped scoring. You've got to keep scoring and you need pace to do that because in the half court they're just too long and too athletic. They did a great job defensively and we helped them by not moving the basketball."
Nick Collison made a layup early in the final period to put the Thunder up 91-76. Spurs never really had the energy nor the motivation to chase Thunder, Westbrook scored three from foul line to put Oklahoma City up 101-88 and they went on to win 107-93.
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