The Oklahoma City Thunder drilled 21 three-pointers in a 121-113 victory over Cleveland on Sunday that halted the Cavaliers’ seven-game NBA winning streak.<\/p>\n
Isaiah Joe<\/a> scored 22 points, and Cason Wallace<\/a> added 20 points and 10 assists for the short-handed Thunder, who improved their Western Conference-leading record to 44-14 despite the absence of injured starters Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> and Jalen Williams<\/a>, as well as Ajay Mitchell<\/a> and Alex Caruso<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s a lot of fun just getting the ball rolling,” said Wallace, who had just one turnover and excelled in a tough assignment of guarding James Harden<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Early game, so we tried to get our legs into it right from the jump. I feel like we came out and we had a little bit of momentum early in the game,” added Wallace after a contest in which the Thunder scored the first nine points and led by as many as 23 in the first quarter.<\/p>\n The teams traded the lead in the third, but Oklahoma City<\/a> took the lead into the fourth and did not relinquish it.<\/p>\n Seven Thunder players scored in double figures, with center Chet Holmgren<\/a> contributing a 17-point, 15-rebound double-double.<\/p>\n Harden and Donovan Mitchell<\/a> scored 20 points apiece for Cleveland<\/a>.<\/p>\n Around the league<\/p>\n In San Francisco, Golden State<\/a>‘s Brandin Podziemski<\/a> scored 15 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter as the Warriors beat the Denver Nuggets<\/a> 128-117<\/a>.<\/p>\n Podziemski added 15 rebounds and nine assists, helping the Warriors withstand Denver star Nikola Jokic<\/a>‘s 19th triple-double of the season.<\/p>\n Jokic scored 35 points with 20 rebounds and 12 assists, and Jamal Murray<\/a> added 21 for the Nuggets, who were coming off a 54-point win over Portland<\/a> but never led in the first half.<\/p>\n They asserted themselves after the break against a Golden State team missing not only injured Stephen Curry<\/a> and Jimmy Butler<\/a> but also ailing Kristaps Porzingis<\/a> and Draymond Green<\/a> – ruled out late with lower back trouble.<\/p>\n Denver were up by five midway through the fourth quarter, but the Warriors, with Podziemski leading the way, surged home on a 17-8 scoring run.<\/p>\n “He was brilliant, and we needed it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Podziemski, whose efforts backed up a 23-point performance from teammate Moses Moody<\/a>.<\/p>\n Boston<\/a> star Jaylen Brown<\/a>‘s 32 points, eight rebounds, and seven assists propelled the Celtics to a 111-89<\/a> victory over the Lakers<\/a> in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The latest game in the historic rivalry turned into a rout, the Lakers pulling their starters after Payton Pritchard<\/a> drilled a step-back three-pointer to push the Celtics’ lead to 22 points with 3:24 remaining.<\/p>\n Pritchard scored 30 points off the bench, making six of the Celtics’ 14 three-pointers as Boston, second in the Eastern Conference, notched their ninth win in 11 games.<\/p>\n Luka Doncic<\/a> scored 25 points, and LeBron James<\/a> added 20 for the Lakers, who were held to their second-lowest point total of the season.<\/p>\n Even in defeat, superstar James hit another NBA milestone. The league’s scoring leader, playing in his 1,600th regular-season game, surpassed 43,000 career points.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> halted their 10-game losing streak with a 134-130<\/a> victory over the Indiana Pacers<\/a>. Khris Middleton<\/a> scored 25 points, P.J. Washington<\/a> added 23, and six Mavs players scored in double figures.<\/p>\n The Toronto<\/a> Raptors, fueled by 32 points from Immanuel Quickley<\/a>, beat Milwaukee<\/a> 122-94 to end the Bucks’ three-game winning streak.<\/p>\n Kevin Porter<\/a> Jr. and Ryan Rollins<\/a> scored 21 points each for Milwaukee, who were again without star Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> because of a calf strain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder drilled 21 three-pointers in a 121-113 victory over Cleveland on Sunday that halted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-498066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498066","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=498066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}