The Oklahoma City Thunder found different avenues of scoring without guards Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or George Hill.
The rotation players put on a show on both ends of the court against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday as the Thunder bounced back from the Monday loss to the Rockets with a 104-87 win.
“I thought we had really good carryover from the stuff that we addressed yesterday from the first game,” head coach Mark Daigneault said.
“I give our guys credit just not getting too emotional after that last game. No one likes giving up 130, losing by 30, but I don’t think we got too low after that one, just like we won’t get too high after this one.”
Forward Kenrich Williams led the Thunder with 19 points in 23 minutes off the bench while forward Darius Bazley had 18 points and 12 rebounds, Al Horford had 17 points and six rebounds and Hamidou Diallo had 16 points and nine rebounds.
Rockets big Christian Wood had only eight points and forward P.J. Tucker was scoreless.
Name an area of the game. The Thunder improved in it. Like the mini-series against the Los Angeles Clippers, they followed a poor loss with an impressive comeback performance.
Daigneault said that it is a skill to to forget about performances like Monday’s and move on to put something together like Wednesday. Williams agreed.
“It’s a skill, and it’s trying to be resilient and just putting the past game behind us and coming out and competing,” Williams said.
Here are three specific areas of improvement that won Oklahoma City the game.
