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Dort Dealing With Knee Sprain; CP3 Out For Friday's Game

August 14th, 2020 at 10:14am CST by Luke Adams

Thunder wing Luguentz Dort, who suffered a right knee sprain this week, will miss Friday’s regular season finale against the Clippers, according to Royce Young of ESPN (Twitter link). Dort will be listed as day-to-day going forward, so his availability for the start of the postseason next week remains unknown. Oklahoma City’s first-round series vs. Houston gets underway on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, as Young adds, Thunder guard Chris Paul will also miss Friday’s seeding game due to a left hand sprain. That injury isn’t believed to be an issue that will compromise Paul’s postseason availability at all — he’s simply getting a rest before the playoffs get underway.

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Rockets Expect Westbrook To Miss Start Of Postseason

August 13th, 2020 at 11:36am CST by Luke Adams

The Rockets expect Russell Westbrook – who was diagnosed on Wednesday with a strained right quad – to miss at least “the first few games” of their first-round playoff series, reports Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle.

So far, the team has offered few concrete updates on Westbrook, only indicating that it will reevaluate his quad injury before the postseason begins next week. However, a source with knowledge of the Rockets’ thinking told Feigen on Thursday that the All-Star guard will at least miss the start of the playoffs and could be out longer than that.

It’s bad news for the Rockets, who are locked into a first-round matchup against Westbrook’s old team, the Thunder. The series promised a fascinating backcourt duel, with Westbrook, James Harden, and Eric Gordon going up against the Oklahoma City trio of Chris Paul, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Dennis Schröder.

However, it sounds like Houston will have to make do without Westbrook for at least the first couple games of that series, forcing Harden, Gordon, and backup guards Austin Rivers and Ben McLemore to take on increased responsibilities.

Westbrook’s return timeline will depend on how he responds to treatment, tweets ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Hopefully, by the time the Rockets/Thunder series gets underway next Monday or Tuesday, we’ll have a better sense of when the former MVP might be able to return to the lineup.

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Sixers Assured Of Receiving OKC’s 2020 First-Round Pick

August 13th, 2020 at 9:29am CST by Luke Adams

The Thunder‘s last-minute win over the Heat on Wednesday assured that Oklahoma City will send its 2020 first-round pick to the Sixers, as Derek Bodner of The Athletic tweets.

That selection had been top-20 protected, and the Thunder had been hovering around the league’s 10th-best record since even before the season was suspended in March. Currently, Oklahoma City is tied with Houston at 44-27, meaning the pick projects to land at either No. 23 or 24, as our reverse standings show.

If OKC loses its final seeding game on Friday against the Clippers, the pick could end up as high as No. 21. However, it can’t get to No. 20, since the Heat and Pacers (both currently 44-28) will play each other on Friday, guaranteeing that at least one of those teams will finish with a worse record than the Thunder. As such, the top-20 protection won’t apply.

The pick will be an important asset this offseason for the 76ers, since they previously traded their own 2020 first-round pick to the Clippers (who flipped it to Brooklyn). If the Thunder’s first-rounder had landed in the top 20, Philadelphia would have instead received OKC’s 2022 and 2023 second-round picks.

The Sixers originally acquired the Thunder first-rounder in 2016 in exchange for Jerami Grant. Philadelphia sent it to Orlando during the 2017 draft to acquire Anzejs Pasecniks‘s rights, but later acquired it back in its 2019 Markelle Fultz trade with the Magic.

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Seven Of Eight First-Round Playoff Matchups Set

August 13th, 2020 at 6:59am CST by Luke Adams

AUGUST 13: Following wins by the Thunder and Clippers on Wednesday night, three Western Conference first-round matchups have now been set, with only the Lakers still awaiting their opponent. Those first-round series are as follows:

  • Los Angeles Lakers (1) vs. Play-in winner (8)
  • Los Angeles Clippers (2) vs. Dallas Mavericks (7)
  • Denver Nuggets (3) vs. Utah Jazz (6)
  • Oklahoma City Thunder (4/5) vs. Houston Rockets (4/5)

We’ll know by the end of Thursday which two teams out of the Trail Blazers, Grizzlies, Suns, and Spurs will be participating in the play-in tournament in the West, but it may be Sunday before the Lakers know their first-round opponent.

AUGUST 12: As a result of the Pacers’ 108-104 win over Houston this afternoon, the four Eastern Conference matchups for the first round of the postseason have been set. They are as follows:

  • Milwaukee Bucks (1) vs. Orlando Magic (8)
  • Toronto Raptors (2) vs. Brooklyn Nets (7)
  • Boston Celtics (3) vs. Philadelphia 76ers (6)
  • Miami Heat (4/5) vs. Indiana Pacers (4/5)

Typically, the Heat and Pacers would be continuing to fight for home court advantage in their series, but the unusual nature of this season means claiming the No. 4 seed instead of No. 5 won’t make much of a difference.

Despite the fact that several teams were within two or three games of one another in the standings when the restart began – or were even tied, like the Pacers and Sixers – the first-round matchups in the East look exactly the same as they did when the season was suspended on March 11.

Over in the West, a small number of teams – including the No. 1 Lakers – are locked into their playoff spots, but most matchups remain up in the air. For now, the most likely pairings are Lakers/play-in winner, Clippers/Mavericks, Nuggets/Jazz, and Rockets/Thunder, but one or more of those could change by Friday.

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McDonough: Thunder Tried To Trade Up For Booker In 2015

August 11th, 2020 at 4:01pm CST by Luke Adams
  • Former Suns GM Ryan McDonough, who drafted Devin Booker with the No. 13 pick in 2015, tells Chris Mannix of SI.com that the Thunder tried to trade up one spot from No. 14 in what he believes was an effort to nab Booker themselves. “You could kind of hear or sense the air come out of the (OKC) room,” McDonough said of the moment when he told the Thunder he was drafting Booker. “You could tell they wanted him.”
  • Although he has been part of the Thunder‘s rotation for most of his rookie season, Darius Bazley has received a bump in minutes this summer and has responded well, with his first career double-double (22 points, 10 rebounds) on Monday. Nick Gallo of OKCThunder.com notes that Bazley’s play in the restart bodes well for his long-term potential, while Jenni Carlson of The Oklahoman points to the 20-year-old’s shot selection as a key reason for his breakout.
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Dennis Schröder Returns To NBA’s Campus

August 11th, 2020 at 3:06pm CST by Luke Adams

Thunder guard Dennis Schröder has returned to the NBA’s campus at Walt Disney World, a team spokesperson confirmed to Joe Mussatto of The Oklahoman on Tuesday. Schröder left Orlando over a week ago in order to be with his wife for the birth of their second child.

Assuming Schröder tested negative for the coronavirus for each of the last seven days while away from the campus, the expectation is that he’ll have to quarantine for just four days now that he’s back at Disney World. We don’t know exactly when Schröder returned and began quarantining, so it remains to be seen whether he’ll be available to play in Oklahoma City’s final seeding game on Friday vs. the Clippers.

At the very least, Schröder figures to miss Wednesday’s game against Miami. If the veteran guard doesn’t clear quarantine in time for Friday’s game, the Thunder will plan to work him back into the rotation during the first game of the postseason next week, barring any quarantine- or testing-related complications.

While he was away from the NBA’s campus, Schröder was named a finalist for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award for 2019/20. He has enjoyed the best year of his career in OKC this season, averaging 18.9 PPG, 4.0 APG, and 3.7 RPG with career-best shooting percentages of 46.9% from the floor and 37.9% from beyond the arc.

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Doncic, Porzingis, SGA Among Players Out For Monday’s Games

August 10th, 2020 at 11:09am CST by Luke Adams

Mavericks stars Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis won’t play in Monday’s game against Utah, according to the league’s official injury report. Dallas will also be without starting forward Dorian Finney-Smith.

Doncic and Porzingis are both listed out due to “injury recovery” — right ankle for Doncic and left knee for Porzingis. Finney-Smith, meanwhile, is dealing with a left hip strain.

At 42-30, the No. 7 Mavericks are two games behind the sixth-seeded Jazz (43-27), so today’s game has seeding implications. If the Mavs lose, they’ll be locked into the No. 7 seed in the West. Utah, just a half-game behind the No. 5 Thunder, could still move up a spot or two in the standings, though the team may prefer to remain at No. 6 if it means avoiding the Rockets in the first round. Houston has eliminated the Jazz in the postseason in each of the last two years.

Donovan Mitchell has also been downgraded from questionable to out for today’s game due to a left lower leg peroneal strain, according to the Jazz (via Twitter).

Meanwhile, per the league’s injury report, the Thunder will be without Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (right calf contusion), Steven Adams (left lower leg contusion), Danilo Gallinari (left ankle injury maintenance), and Nerlens Noel (right ankle sprain), in addition to missing Dennis Schröder, who remains out for personal reasons after attending the birth of his child.

Those absences bode well for the Suns, who will need to remain undefeated in the bubble in order to keep pace in the race for the Western Conference’s final playoff spot. As we detailed earlier today, Phoenix won’t technically be eliminated from postseason contention with a loss, but it would make the path to a play-in spot a whole lot more difficult.

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Luguentz Dort Continues To Show Flashes Of Offensive Improvement

August 9th, 2020 at 6:03pm CST by JD Shaw
  • Thunder guard Luguentz Dort has shown flashes of improvement in his offensive game, Cameron Jourdan of The Oklahoman writes. Dort, 21, scored 16 points on Friday and nine points on Sunday, demonstrating his potential throughout the contests. He went undrafted last June and has earned the respects of his teammates and coaches this season.
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NBA Announces Finalists For 2019/20 Awards

August 8th, 2020 at 12:01pm CST by marksuleymanov

The NBA has announced the finalists for several awards as the seeding games on the Orlando campus move forward and the postseason nears. It was announced in July that all awards for the 2019/20 season would be based on games up until March 11, when the coronavirus pandemic shuttered play. Media members made their votes before the seeding games began on July 30.

NBA Most Valuable Player Finalists:

NBA Defensive Player of the Year:

NBA Rookie of the Year:

NBA Most Improved Player:

NBA Sixth Man of the Year:

NBA Coach of the Year:

  • Mike Budenholzer (Bucks)
  • Billy Donovan (Thunder)
  • Nick Nurse (Raptors)

The winners for the awards will be announced during the NBA playoffs after the seeding games period concludes on August 14.

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SGA Getting More Chances To Run Offense

August 6th, 2020 at 10:50am CST by Luke Adams
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