Dennis Schroder feasts as OKC Thunder defeat Magic: player grades

The OKC Thunder limped into Orlando down two starters but utilized balanced scoring and a big night from Dennis Schroder to capture the victory.  Grades offer the details.

Another night where the OKC Thunder were playing shorthanded as Steven Adams and Terrance Ferguson weren’t available again. The former courtesy of Clint Capela‘s shot to Adams in the Rockets match.

Despite being on the road and without key players the Thunder employed the next man up rule and fortunately, Nerlens Noel returned in time to start in place of Adams.

Still, the Orlando Magic is a lengthy squad so the advantage for height and frontcourt depth fell on their side of the hardwood. They’re also a solid defensive club but struggle offensively. Rather, they are streaky offensively. When Terrence Ross and Evan Fournier are rolling they can put up points with the best offensive clubs.

Early on the OKC Thunder avoided their bad habits by winning the first quarter 24-21 and continued that pressure in the second with a 36-30 frame. The other concerning habit of the Thunder did rear it’s head, however, as the Magic took the third quarter 38-32 to pull the Magic closer.

The good news is the Thunder are stellar in the fourth as they’ve collected the most wins via their clutch time efforts and seem to flip a switch as soon as the horn sounds for the final frame. That was the case as OKC made an early 12-4 run to start the fourth to give themselves some padding. The Magic are scrappy though and battled back to cut the lead to one entering the pivotal clutch time segment.

As has become typical for the Thunder, clutch time is where they excel and this night was no different as the Point God, Chris Paul took over and led his team to the victory by virtue of an 11 to eight run through those final five minutes.

Balanced scoring, lockdown defense and a big night from Dennis Schroder ruled the match as the Thunder went on to victory.

With that let’s look at the player grades from the huge win.