1, 2, 3…. That’s what we call a winning streak. The OKC Thunder show some grit in close victory over Charlotte Hornets for their third straight. Alex Abrines goes off!
We’ve seen this before. OKC Thunder walked out of the locker room after halftime, down 48-44. By the next timeout called by Billy Donovan the Hornets had opened the quarter with an 18-3 run that had them up 19 at 66-47.
We’ve seen this before, as Thunder fans. Last year, the year prior, heck when Kevin Durant was still here, we have seen this team fall double digits early in the third only to roll over and take a heavy L. We had prepared ourselves with “Hornets are better than we thought” and “I knew we would lose of of these games on the road.” But those excuses were fabricated all for naught.
Enter: Alex Abrines.
Abrines finished the first half with 8 points tying him for second on the team with Paul George, and trailing only Russell Westbrook at 8. But the difference was Alex’s points came from something the Thunder definitely seemed to be lacking: three pointers.
When we went down 19 we subbed in Alex for Terrance Ferguson and he almost immediately hit a three. Then we subbed Jerami Grant for Dennis Schröder (who will not be referred to as “Schredder”) to open up spacing for us even more. And what happened next was magical, one may even call it euphoric.
Alex Abrines scores 15 points in the 3rd quarter. Hitting 3 HUGE threes. While most importantly helping trim the 19 point deficit to 4 at the end of the 3rd.
From there the Thunder just had to knuckle down in defense and trust Russell Westbrook would carry them to the promise land as he had many times before. And he did just that. Scoring 11 points of his 29 on 5/6 shooting, Russ made great decisions down the stretch and made game changing plays to help put this game away for the Thunder.
Wanna hear how I missed a lot of the first half? Wanna know who my most impressive unit was? Wanna know who won the Academy Award for the Player of the Game?!
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Hope you enjoy, and as always. Thunder Up!