OKC Thunder: Player grades features 29-point gem from Dort

OKC Thunder starting lineup grades:

Aleksej Pokusevski is the gift that keeps on giving – but not always in the best way.

Pokusevski is a hungry player, and that hunger will sometimes pay off in extra touches and more scoring. And sometimes, it fails horribly, and we’re left wondering why nobody limits his touches.

His saving grace this game was his rim protection.

Pokusevski blocked a team-high six shots, which is pretty special no matter how bad he was offensively, which, for the record, was pretty bad. Pokusevski scored just eight points on 28.6 percent shooting in 28 minutes.

When he wasn’t shooting the ball, he was making time for the rebound and assist game, where he finished with seven and five, respectively.

Bazley is one of the team’s more consistent scorers, even though bad nights are not unheard of from time to time.

Sunday night wasn’t awful for Bazley, but it wasn’t great, by any stretch of the imagination. He scored 16 points on 40 percent shooting, although he was a fair bit more accurate from deep, where he hit three of his five 3-point shots.

He wrangled eight rebounds in the game and even got involved in the passing game with one assist, but he struggled with ball security, turning the ball over five times.

Moses Brown had a rare off night. Since his return to the Thunder from the G League, Brown has been a fairly consistent scorer for Oklahoma City, but for whatever reason, Brown took just three shots in his 20 minutes on the court, and he missed all of them.

He was also noticeably absent from the boards, a place he has been dominant over the last two months. He finished with just four rebounds, a far cry from his typically high numbers.

Theo Maledon is a player who has shown he can be explosive and efficient, but he has also had some games where he is none of that.

Sunday’s game fell somewhere in between.

Maledon shot the ball five times and made three of those shots. He also finished 3-for-3 at the free-throw line to close out the game with nine points. He pulled down four rebounds and dealt two assists but was mostly quiet.

Luckily, it’s rebuild season.

If there’s anybody who can stop Dort, it’s himself.

That didn’t happen on Sunday.

Dort scored a team-high 29 points on 60 percent shooting. From 3-point range, he was even more accurate, hitting 62.5 percent of his shots. He did it all in 31 minutes.

Dort protected the ball well in the game, finishing with just one turnover, and he got involved in almost every aspect of the game, coming up with one steal, grabbing four rebounds, and dealing two assists.

It was a good all-around game for Dort, even if the result was yet another loss for the Thunder.