OKC Thunder player grades: Josh Giddey makes history, Lu Dort scores 31 in 106-101 loss to Bulls
The Oklahoma City Thunder complete its road back-to-back with a 106-101 loss to the Chicago Bulls. It seems like the Thunder lost a lot of juice in the second half as tired legs took over. The Thunder are currently in a pretty brutal stretch in its schedule where the team hasn’t had more than one day off in over two weeks. So the fact that they were able to only lose to the Bulls, who are one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, by just five points on the second night of back-to-back shows just how well-coached this team is.
Josh Giddey and Lu Dort led the way for the Thunder. Giddey recorded the second-youngest triple-double in NBA history — with him also owning the record for the youngest. For Dort, he finished with 31 points on a career-high 14 free throw attempts.
For the Bulls, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic each had a 30 piece with the team needing every single one of those points to squeeze by with a win. DeRozan finished with 38 points while Vucevic finished with 31 points and 15 rebounds.
Overall, this was an encouraging performance to see as the Thunder’s young players were able to keep up with a legit playoff contender. This game will go down as a loss but there are a lot of positives to take away from it. Let’s take a look at player grades.
Josh Giddey: A+
Giddey made history this game as he became the second-youngest player to record a triple double in the NBA. The first also being Giddey. Giddey finished with 11 points, 10 assists and 12 rebounds. It’s a safe prediction to make that the list is going to be filled with Giddey’s name a couple more times before the season ends.
This triple double performance wasn’t a guarantee this game though despite Giddey sitting at 9-9-9 before the fourth quarter even began. But eventually, Giddey was able to collect the necessary stats he needed to get to own the record. Overall, a great performance for Giddey.
Lu Dort: A+
After a tough two game stretch for Dort where he averaged 15 points on 32.3 percent shooting, he was able to correct course this game with a very efficient 31 point performance. Dort went 8-of-19 from the field and shot 5-of-12 from three. But what got him the 31 points was the fact that Dort was able to get to the line a career high 14 times, where he went 10-of-14. Which means Dort did a great job at attacking the basket and drawing contact.
This was the perfect scoring game for Dort as he was hot from three and was able to get to the line at ease. It’s unrealistic to expect these type of performances to start happening more often, but at the same time it would be unfair to not give Dort credit for this impressive scoring performance.
Darius Bazley had a tale of two halves with his offensive performance this game. In total, Bazley finished with 17 points on 7-of-21 shooting along with eight rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. But in the first half, Bazley scored 11 points on 5-of-12 shooting and six points on 2-of-9 shooting. Best theory for this stark contrast in halves is the possibility that Bazley might have just simply gotten tired. Which is a real possibility, especially considering his defensive responsibilities and how much energy is needed on that end of the court.
Kenrich Williams had a solid game off the bench as he finished with 12 points and four rebounds. For comparison reasons, the Bulls entire bench scored just nine points. A very good 27 minutes of production for the 27-year-old.
Aleksej Pokusevski extends his streak of quality NBA games to four with a seven point, four rebound and three block performance in just 15 minutes. Pokusevski being able to put together a string of competent NBA games is a huge milestone for the 20-year-old as he has struggled mightily in both the NBA and G League levels this season up until recently.
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