Thunder’s Lu Dort before game vs. Celtics: ‘We winning today’
At some point on Tuesday, it came to wing Lu Dort’s attention that the Oklahoma City Thunder’s losing streak would reach a franchise record if they lost to the Boston Celtics.
He wasn’t about to let that happen.
“I saw it today,” Dort said after the game on Tuesday. “I told Shai, I’m like, ‘Yo, we winning today.'”
He scored a team-high 24 points in a 119-115 Thunder victory that ended too close for comfort but nevertheless was a win, and a good one, over a playoff team.
“That was my mindset for the game, to do everything to win. And the fact that we all did it as a team was great,” Dort said.
The Thunder led by 10 points with 1:08 to play, but the Celtics cut the lead down to three in a 20-second stretch. From there, it was a dogfight that only ended when Isaiah Roby rebounded an intentionally missed Evan Fournier free throw and iced the game at the free throw line with 2.6 seconds to play.
“Coach put me and Tony (Bradley) in kind of knowing they were gonna make the first, miss the second,” Roby said. “I was able to secure the rebound and then go down. We shoot free throws every day.
“So a free throw — I like my chances with that shot.”
Jaylen Brown finished with 39 points and Payton Pritchard had 28, but the rest of the Celtics scored just 48 points and shot 19-for-55 from the field, below 35%.
Overall, it was a good game for the Thunder, who needed an actual victory after a 1-17 span that included what had been a winless April.
“It’s been a rough stretch. We’ve lost close ones, we’ve lost some blowouts, we’ve had some games where things haven’t broken our way, and I just give them so much credit for the way that we bounce back up, dust ourselves off, pull together,” said head coach Mark Daigneault.
“It’s really pretty impressive. I was talking to Sam (Presti) the other night on the plane, it was a few games ago, and he asked me the question: ‘Who are you gaining respect for, from a character standpoint during this time?’
“And the list was long. And that’s what I’ll say about this team, that right there was a tough stretch and it was a character test. … It’s an opportunity to show who we are through the adversity, and I came away incredibly impressed with not only our players, but a lot of people in our organization.”
