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In place of Sixers game, Thunder had 28-minute live play practice

The Oklahoma City Thunder may not have been able to take the floor against the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday, but they still got onto the court for some game-like action.

The team had five-on-five live play after the game was postponed when the Sixers had too many players in coronavirus protocol to put together an eight-man active roster.

“You could say it was game simulated, but at the same time it wasn’t because there weren’t real refs or anything. But we played against each other, we got up and down,” forward Darius Bazley said in a Zoom press conference on Tuesday evening.

Head coach Mark Daigneault said the scrimmage lasted for about 28 minutes.

“Everybody was already there, our players were already loose, and so we just sprung into action and put on a practice,” he said.

“We got a good 28 minutes of live play where we were able to keep our conditioning up and kind of stay on the same trajectory that we were on in terms of building the team through the game schedule.”

With those 28 minutes of action, the players were able to stay prepared for the upcoming five-game road trip that begins Tuesday night against the Denver Nuggets.

The Thunder’s tough schedule will also pit them against the Los Angeles Clippers twice, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns before they return home.