Fox OK replay features the OKC Thunder January and Hawks, Jan 24th match. Here are the three keys to the win.
As the OKC Thunder continues to get in workouts in small groups at the Thunder Ion fans anxiously await the restart in Orlando. There is solid reasoning to believe the Thunder could perform well at the Disney bubble environment, but those games are still over five weeks away.
To help ease our need for live sports, Fox Sports Oklahoma continues their series of replaying the top Thunder wins through 64 games.
Tonight that game features the Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks versus our Thunder and airs at 7:00 p.m.
As you settle in to watch the game here are the three keys that led to the victory.
Three keys to OKC Thunder win vs. Hawks
Dort earning his starting spot:
Although Terrance Ferguson was still not with the team Luguentz Dort performed so well as a starter he made it impossible for Billy Donovan to replace him.
The players’ Dort matched up against during this four-game stretch included Damian Lillard, Markelle Fultz, James Harden, and Trae Young. Talk about a plethora of quality NBA guards..
In this match, Dort was spectacular holding Trae Young to 7 of 20 from the field and 2 of 8 from deep. His defense was so stellar TI began pondering if he should stay in the starting rotation which is precisely what happened.
Gallinari returns to form:
A poor shooting night for Danilo Gallinari proved to be an outlier as the forward returned to his typical consistent self. He dropped 25 points on the Hawks and did so extremely efficiently.
His shooting lines featured 7 of 10 from the field (70 percent), 4 of 6 deep balls for 66.6 percent and he was perfect from the stripe (7 of 7). The Italian filled up the stat sheet with six rebounds, three assists, and a steal.
At this point in the season, our writing team began hoping Sam Presti would find a way to keep Gallo given the years of unsuccessful efforts to fill the power forward position once Durant left.
SGA put on a show:
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From the tip, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was aggressive a sign confirmed by his 13 free throws (at that point double his season average of five per game). Like Gallo, the Canadian delivered a full stat sheet scoring 24 points along with three rebounds, six assists, one steal, and three blocks.
Although SGA didn’t capture a double-double this was the point in the season where the guard seemingly had a breakthrough. Coming into this match he had registered his first career triple-double in Minnesota (20-20-10) and produced three consecutive double-doubles against the Blazers, Rockets, and Magic.
To be fair SGA didn’t need to produce a double-double effort because the Thunder had such a large need Donovan was able to give his reserves more time in the 140-111 blow-out.
If your partial to stats and individual performances check out the TI grades check out our player grades that followed the January 24th victory.