Portland Trail Blazers (6-9, ninth in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (16-1, first in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City; Sunday, 7 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Oklahoma City heads into a matchup with Portland as winners of eight consecutive games.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are 1-1 in division matchups. Oklahoma City leads the Western Conference in team defense, giving up 106.3 points while holding opponents to 42.6% shooting.<\/p>\n
The Trail Blazers are 3-1 against the rest of their division. Portland is second in the NBA with 15.4 offensive rebounds per game led by Donovan Clingan averaging 5.0.<\/p>\n
The Thunder average 14.0 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.4 more made shots on average than the 12.6 per game the Trail Blazers give up. The Trail Blazers are shooting 44.9% from the field, 2.3% higher than the 42.6% the Thunder’s opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
The teams square off for the second time this season. The Trail Blazers won 121-119 in the last matchup on Nov. 6. Deni Avdija led the Trail Blazers with 26 points, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 35 points.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Gilgeous-Alexander is scoring 31.9 points per game with 4.9 rebounds and 6.6 assists for the Thunder. Isaiah Joe is averaging 16.0 points and 0.0 rebounds while shooting 83.3% over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n
Avdija is averaging 25.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.2 assists for the Trail Blazers. Jerami Grant is averaging 5.0 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Thunder: 9-1, averaging 123.0 points, 43.4 rebounds, 26.9 assists, 11.1 steals and 5.6 blocks per game while shooting 49.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 103.9 points per game.<\/p>\n
Trail Blazers: 3-7, averaging 119.3 points, 46.8 rebounds, 24.5 assists, 7.9 steals and 4.4 blocks per game while shooting 44.9% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 124.4 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Thunder: Aaron Wiggins: day to day (thigh), Nikola Topic: out (groin), Jalen Williams: day to day (wrist), Kenrich Williams: day to day (knee), Thomas Sorber: out for season (knee).<\/p>\n
Trail Blazers: Scoot Henderson: out (hamstring), Matisse Thybulle: out (thumb), Jrue Holiday: day to day (calf), Blake Wesley: out (foot), Shaedon Sharpe: day to day (calf), Damian Lillard: out for season (achilles).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers (6-9, ninth in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (16-1, first in the Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[172317,4225,64,63,590,31647,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-301592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-172317","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-basketball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}