The exciting NBA regular season filled with drama and out-of-this-world performances rages on and offers us the competitive clash between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors. We’ll see that the defending champions would need to double their efforts against OKC to keep their hopes for qualifying in the playoffs alive.
What’s up with the Oklahoma City Thunder?
The Oklahoma City Thunder has really been feeling it lately, recently gaining a new team record of 153 points in a single game against the Houston Rockets.
The blowout victory over the Rockets snapped their two-game losing streak and they’ll definitely try to keep the momentum going with another win over the Warriors.
OKC has exceeded a lot of expectations this season and we can owe a lot of that to good defense and their star player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He will be participating in the NBA All-Star Game for the first time in his career, which is a deserved honor for the young Canadian, despite his team currently sitting outside the Play-In tournament (25-27).
The Thunder guard is averaging 30.8 points, 5.6 assists, with 50.5 percent shooting from the field. However, he averages about only 17.6 points per game against the Warriors, which shows that Steve Kerr and his team know how to limit his production.
What’s up with the Golden State Warriors?
Every time it looks like the Warriors are going to start an important winning streak, the team falls again into inconsistency, preventing them from settling in playoff positions in the Western Conference.
Warriors fans shouldn’t fret now though since the squad is just one game away from sixth place in the West. The thing with their location on the standings is that the reigning champions really need to find their best soon if they don’t want to suffer a real disappointment in this campaign.
Everyone’s looking to Steph Curry to keep his team and the Dub Nation afloat. Golden State defeated the Thunder, 128-120, in the previous meeting, and Curry starred in it with 38 points and 12 assists.
At this point of the season, the Warriors are starting to feel the urgency to improve their performance and they’ll be in a killer mindset in order to prevail against a young team like OKC.
Prediction
Looking at their previous meeting, it would seem like the Warriors can take over the Thunder again on this one. Unfortunately for them, they will be without Curry, who left their last game with an injury.
Without their best floor general, they might struggle to pass the ball around which might give SGA and the rest of the Thunder some opportunities to score.
Where to watch
You can catch the Thunder and Warriors in action live tomorrow at 11:00 AM on NBA League Pass.
