Thunder Withstand Rockets' Rally To Win Game 3

By Randy Renner, Senior Writer

This time there was no collapse. This time the Thunder held off a late Rockets rally to win a must have Game 3, 115-113.

The NBA’s top two MVP candidates, James Harden and Russell Westbrook had another epic game, scoring a combined 76 points but it was Thunder center Steven Adams who had the biggest bucket of the night, a tip-in off a missed Westbrook 3-pointer with 35 seconds to play.

That basket, plus a couple of Westbrook free throws, gave the Thunder just enough breathing room to give this series new life by cutting the Houston lead to 2-1 and giving the hometown team a chance to tie things up on Sunday afternoon.

The Thunder had blown a big early lead in Game 1 and went on to a blowout loss, then in Game 2 they blew another big lead and lost a close one.

Last night they again blew a big lead but this time they didn't collapse when the Rockets huffed and puffed. This time they made a couple of critical shots and got a couple critical stops.

The Thunder have been slowly climbing back into the series after that Game 1 blowout.

“I think we’ve gotten better from game to game,” head coach Billy Donovan told reporters after the final horn.

Donovan and his coaches have been pulling a lot of strings in the process, changing up substitution patterns and rotations. In the first game OKC tried to go mostly defensive against Houston, which worked at times but offensively that grouping couldn’t get out of the 80s.

By last night’s third game Donovan leaning far more toward trying to generate offense, giving more minutes to Alex Abrines and Doug McDermott and benching Semaj Christon for Norris Cole.

He also reduced Adams’ minutes a bit while increasing Enes Kanter’s. Those three scored a combined 24 points and both Abrines and McDermott hit a couple of big threes and Kanter dropped in a big bucket to end a Rockets run.

With so many offensive players on the floor the Thunder HAD to have another great defensive performance from Andre Roberson and they got one. He again made things difficult for Harden. Yes he scored 44 points but 18 of those came at the free throw line, he was just 4-for-12 on threes with seven turnovers. And Roberson again scored in double digits with a dozen points on 5-for-8 shooting and 2-for-3 on threes.

Taj Gibson also came through on both ends. He was dominant in the early going hitting six of his first seven shots and finishing with 20 points on 10-for-13 shooting.

The Thunder’s second-leading scorer during the regular season, Victor Oladipo, seemed to get some of his missing mojo back. Dipo had hit just five of his 26 shots in the first two games, but last night he was 5-for-8 and swished a couple of threes to help space the floor and finished with 12 on the night.

Westbrook played a masterful game, under control, getting teammates involved and scoring when he needed to. It all added up to another triple-double, 32 points, 13 rebounds and 11 assists.

“I have an enormous amount of trust in him,” Donovan said. “I have enormous confidence in him because of his preparation and the work that he does. I thought he was unbelievable tonight the way he played from start to finish. He was great. He got guys shots. He took advantage of switches when they switched. He did a lot of different things.”

In Game 2 Westbrook may have tried to do too much by himself, taking 18 shots in the fourth quarter of that loss and making just four. Last night he took 24 shots over the course of the game and didn’t even attempt a 3-pointer until the one he missed in closing seconds, the one that Adams ended up tipping in.

“I had to do a better job at trusting my teammates for 48 minutes,” Westbrook admitted. “Tonight those guys made plays throughout the whole game.”

And now the Thunder have a chance to even up a series that looked to be getting away from them just a couple of days ago.