Preview: Thunder look to win in LA for second straight night

After dismantling the LA Lakers on Wednesday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder will look for a repeat performance on Thursday inside the Staples Center when they face the Clippers.

In the first meeting between the Thunder and Clippers this season, Paul George led Oklahoma City to a victory with 42 points in a break out performance – he helped ease the mind of Thunder fans who may have already begun panicking. A lot has changed since early November however, so we can expect two different teams to square off against each other on Thursday.

As short handed as they may be, the Clippers have proven they can play well at times, with wins over Toronto, Washington and Houston. LAC goes into Thursday’s game riding a four-game winning streak after defeating Memphis 113-105 on Monday. Despite playing without Austin Rivers, Patrick Beverly and Danilo Gallinari, the Clippers are only 2 games under .500.

The 17 wins they’ve collected to this point are thanks in no small part to the efforts of Lou Williams, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. All three players have taken on a bigger work load to make the most out of what looks like a rebuilding season.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City Thunder have persevered through some difficult times of their own, as the only thing they seem to do consistently is play inconsistent.

Just when OKC fans were ready to jump off of the sinking ship in the first month of the season, an uplifting win over the Warriors made many skeptics take a step back. The Thunder then followed up the signature win with three consecutive losses to Detriot, Dallas and Orlando which took them back to square one.

Fast forward to the end of December and we see the Thunder claim six wins in a row, which included the Rockets on Christmas and Toronto two days later. Oklahoma City appeared to be finishing out the year 2017 strong and turning the corner at the right time, but the lack of late-game execution came back to haunt the them in back-to-back losses against Milwaukee and Dallas. Naturally they bounced back by destroying the Lakers last night by 37 points.

As Oklahoma City continues to find itself in this season of transition and the Clippers work to keep their heads above water, it will be interesting to see which version of both teams will show up Thursday night.