\t\t\tShai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered a 40-point scoring performance as the Oklahoma City Thunder became the first team to punch their ticket to the NBA playoffs with a 113-108 defeat of the Orlando Magic on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander was backed with 20 points and 12 rebounds from Chet Holmgren while Ajay Mitchell’s 16 point-display helped the NBA champions slam the door on the Magic in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City’s ninth straight victory leaves them on 54-15 at the top of the Western Conference, ahead of the second-placed San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n
Orlando fell to 38-30 to remain in sixth place in the Eastern Conference tables. <\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero led Orlando’s scoring with 32 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n
Reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Gilgeous-Alexander saluted the Thunder’s resilience after a mixed first-half performance.<\/p>\n
“We got off to a good start but then the car kind of came off the road for a little bit,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.<\/p>\n
“But that’s what great teams do \u2013 they figure out a way to get the car back on the road, they figure out a way to go into a building and win a game when the chips are stacked against you, and we did that tonight.”<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander’s virtuoso display extended his record-breaking streak of consecutive games scoring 20 points or more to 129.<\/p>\n
San Antonio stayed in touch with Oklahoma City after rolling to a 132-104 blowout over the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n
A balanced offensive performance saw seven San Antonio players finish in double figures, with Victor Wembanyama and Keldon Johnson leading the scoring with 18 points apiece.<\/p>\n
In the Eastern Conference, the Detroit Pistons cruised past the Washington Wizards 130-117 to tighten their grip at the top of the table.<\/p>\n
The Pistons improved to 49-19 thanks to 36 points from Jalen Duren but the victory was overshadowed by an injury to Cade Cunningham.<\/p>\n
Cunningham, who is one of the contenders for the NBA’s MVP award, left the game in the first quarter with a back problem.<\/p>\n
The New York Knicks remain in third place in the East after a 136-110 romp against the hapless Indiana Pacers, last year’s NBA Finals runners-up who are languishing on 15-54 this season. (AFP)<\/p>\n
Edited by Tony Sabine\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered a 40-point scoring performance as the Oklahoma City Thunder became the first team to punch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-543986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}