Time: 6PM CST Location: Chesapeake Arena, OKC Broadcast: FSOK *** The Thunder hobble into tonight’s (shudder) key matchup against the Suns, who currently sit in the West with one more win than OKC. How bad are things looking right now? The Minnesota Timberwolves somehow look more competent than the Thunder do. Which is to say, it’s not panic time (yet), but short of saying this is a ‘must win,’ I would argue it is a “must not miss opportunity” to figure out a few things and get a win during this rocky start to the season. First, a free token for the game to be played: Per #Suns, Devin Booker is OUT tonight at Oklahoma City with a strained left hamstring. — Gina Mizell (@ginamizell) October 28, 2018 However, that may be offset somewhat by: Thunder injury report lists Russell Westbrook as questionable for tomorrow against the Suns with right shoulder soreness. No shootaround tomorrow, so next update probably will be pregame. — Brett Dawson (@BDawsonWrites) October 27, 2018 Regardless, nothing really changes in terms of what will cure OKC. As Dom & Bobby argued, they’re missing a ton of shots, and they’re either good shots they they are missing, or they’re bad shots that need to be turned into good shots. The Thunder are shooting 26.4% on shots defined as wide open. That’s dead last in the league. Second worst: the Rockets, at 35.6%. OKC ranks last in field goal percentage, 3-point percentage and free throw percentage. — Royce Young (@royceyoung) October 28, 2018 OKC has to begin to make things right tonight, and it doesn’t even have to be everything all at once. That said, things going wrong again, especially in the 4th, OKC will begin to face the kind of scrutiny lottery teams do every season. Are they ready?<doc-sep>box score | Bright Side of the Sun The Oklahoma City Thunder finally got on the board with a win tonight against the Phoenix Suns. The Thunder showed a fast-paced offense, stifling defense, and came away with a 117-110 victory. OKC had three players score 20 points and five players score in double digits. Steven Adams was inactive tonight with a calf strain, so off-season pickup Nerlens Noel stepped into the starting lineup in Adams’ absence. Noel would start at center along with Jerami Grant, Paul George, Terrance Ferguson and Russell Westbrook. The Thunder used a strong initial push and solid defense at the rim to build a sturdy lead and took a 62-48 lead into halftime. George had a solid first half offensively, scoring 15 points. Westbrook did a great job setting up his teammates and creating easy shots for them, taking a big step back in his shot selection. In fact, despite finishing with 23 on the night, Westbrook finished the first half with only two field goals. In the second half, the Thunder did not let up off the gas on either end. OKC’s defense stayed aggressive, and the offensive shot selection was tremendous, cutting way back on the overzealous 3-point attempts. There were many layups, open threes, easy dunks, and then this happened. The Thunder led 96-76 after three and coasted to a victory. The Thunder shot 50% from the field, after coming into tonight’s game last in field goal percentage. The Thunder scored 60 points in the paint and dished 22 assists. They also forced 22 turnovers. They shot 24 of 35 from the free throw line (68%), and also 7 of 24 from three (29%) so there is still much work to be done. Westbrook finished with 23 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. George also scored 23 points (9-of-15 shooting), dished five assists, and pulled down five boards. Noel had a monster night with 20 points and 15 rebounds filling in for Adams. Grant scored 14 points (4-of-9 shooting). Patterson had a solid night with 17 points off the bench. Schroder also scored 12 points off the bench. TJ Warren led the Suns with 18 points. Rookie DeAndre Ayton had a double-double with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Ryan Anderson also put in 15 points. Final note: beware Russell Westbrook trying to take your pizza. Before the game Russell Westbrook offered up a trade with this young OKC fan: His piece of pizza for one of Westbrook's shoes. Westbrook handed over the shoe, but ended up passing on the pizza. Seems like a bad trade to me. pic.twitter.com/EVHKK1iejK — Royce Young (@royceyoung) October 29, 2018 Next game: vs Clippers on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 7PM CST<doc-sep>The OKC Thunder capture their much-needed first win of the season courtesy of the Phoenix Suns Coming off yet another frustrating loss, the OKC Thunder needed a feel-good moment to get their mojo back. To the joy of Thunder fans everywhere, OKC started hot and rode that wave all the way to a 117-110 victory over the visiting Phoenix Suns. The win comes at a much-needed time, as the Thunder were staring their first ever 0-5 start square in the eyes. A main reason why tonight resulted in the club’s first victory is that frankly, they made their shots. Oklahoma City’s offense still leaves much to be desired, but they showed enough tonight to give fans encouragement going forward. Phoenix Suns 110 Oklahoma City Thunder 117 Steven Adams and Hamidou Diallo were both late scratches for tonight’s game. This allowed Nerlens Noel and Patrick Patterson to shine in more prominent roles against Phoenix. Going forward, if those two names keep bringing the energy, good things will come to the OKC Thunder. The final NBA team without a win this season is the Cleveland Cavaliers who fired Head Coach Tyronn Lue for Cleveland’s failures. It’s likely Billy Donovan wouldn’t have suffered the same demise had OKC lost, but the scrutiny and calls for his head no doubt would have increased in volume. There is not much else to take away from this game. It is nice to finally see a one in the win column next to the OKC Thunder’s name. This team is still a work in progress, but tonight’s result should be a sign of things to come. OKC has too much talent to dwell in the Western Conference basement for too long.<doc-sep>What: Phoenix Suns (1-4) at Oklahoma City Thunder (0-4) When: Sunday, October 28th Where: Chesapeake Energy Arena, Oklahoma City, OK Watch: Fox Sports AZ Listen: AZ Sports Radio 98.7 FM ————— Wednesday, October 17th. It seems like an awful long time ago. The Suns exploded for 38 fourth quarter points and surged ahead of the Dallas Mavericks for a 21 point win in their season opener. Emotions ran high. This season was going to be different. Or not. The four games since then has been a hot pile of garbage. The Suns have lost by 28, 20, 18 and 21 points in those four games. This marks the first time in franchise history that the Suns have lost four consecutive games by 18+ points. They had actually never done it in three consecutive games prior to this current puppet show. In fact, according to basketball-reference.com, only two teams have ever had a longer stretch of such losses. In 1948 the Providence Steam Rollers lost five consecutive games by 18+ points and in 1970 the Cleveland Cavaliers did it six straight times. That’s right, Suns fans, you’re watching history once again. The latest stop on the “Why are we even watching this crap?” tour was a 117-96 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies last night. The glut of wings (Josh Jackson, Trevor Ariza, T.J. Warren and Mikal Bridges) combined to shoot 8-32 from the field. Jackson also sprinkled in seven turnovers. After a white hot start to the season, Warren has just 13 points total in the last two games. DeAndre Ayton was impressive again, scoring 24 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists. He was also 12-13 from the field. Pro tip for Coach Igor: When your team is struggling to score, you might want to draw up some plays to get more field goal attempts for the guy who is 12-13. Ayton is practically the only bright spot of the season, everyone else has either been uneven or awful. Here are a few more fun factoids in case you didn’t realize just how bad these last four games have been. The Suns have been outscored 112-38 on fast break points during their four game skid. The Suns now have the worst point differential in the league (-13.2). For reference, last season they were at -9.4 (worst in the league). However, through five games last season they were even worse (-16.2). Devin Booker missed the game against the Grizzlies on Saturday with a strained hamstring and is listed as day-to-day. The Thunder have had two days to rest after blowing a 16 point halftime lead in a loss to the Boston Celtics. Russell Westbrook was just 5-20 from the field with five turnovers in his second game back after missing the first two games of the season recovering from knee surgery. Oklahoma City has been putrid on the offensive end this season and is dead last in the league in several categories including a pitiful 24.1% from three point range. Paul George leads the Thunder with 24.5 points per game, but is shooting less than 37% from the field. Westbrook is averaging 22.5 points, 13.5 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game. Steven Adams is averaging 14.0 points and 12.3 rebounds. New addition Dennis Schroder has been erratic and is averaging only 4.5 makes on 15 field goal attempts per game (that’s 30% if you’re keeping score). It seems interesting that a player like Schroder is averaging 15 shots a game while Ayton (62.8%) is only getting 11... So this afternoon we will finally get an answer to the enduring question, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” Or in this case, “What happens when the league’s worst offense meets the league’s worst defense?” Unfortunately, my guess is that OKC gets healthy feasting off a Suns team that is swirling down into a vortex of suck. If Booker is still out, which seems pretty likely to me, this one might get ugly. Not to get too greedy by asking for a win, but a loss by less than 18 points would be nice. Because if the Suns get steam rolled in this one they will be one step closer to a historic run of blowout losses.<doc-sep>
OKLAHOMA CITY — Four days after the Los Angeles Lakers got their first win of the season at the hands of the Phoenix Suns, the Oklahoma City Thunder did the same. Paul George and Russell Westbrook each scored 23 points as the Suns lost 117-110 on Sunday. Rookie Elie Okobo scored 18 points and No. 1 overall draft pick Deandre Ayton added 16 points and 11 rebounds for Phoenix. Devin Booker, who entered the day as the league’s ninth-best scorer at 27.8 points per game, sat out his second straight game with a left hamstring strain. Nerlens Noel had 20 points and 15 rebounds and Patrick Patterson added 17 points for the Thunder. Oklahoma City’s victory left the Cleveland Cavaliers, who fired coach Tyronn Lue on Sunday, as the league’s only winless team. The Thunder led 62-48 at halftime after shooting 49 percent from the field. George scored 15 points before the break, while Westbrook made just two field goals. The Thunder blew a 14-point halftime lead against Boston on Thursday, so the threat of falling apart still was there. Westbrook hit back-to-back layups to make it 82-65 in the third. George drained a shot from just beyond half court at the third-quarter buzzer to put Oklahoma City up 96-76. TIP-INS Suns: G Jamal Crawford and Thunder G Dennis Schroder were called for double technicals late in the third quarter. … The Suns made their first 21 free throws and went 26-for-27 overall. Thunder: Westbrook had been listed as questionable with right shoulder soreness. … Westbrook got a technical foul in the first quarter. … C Steven Adams did not play after having tightness in his left calf during pregame warmups. Noel started in his place. … George was called for a technical in the third quarter. UP NEXT Suns: Host the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday. Thunder: Host the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday. Follow @AZSports