Houston Rockets (31-19, fourth in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (40-12, first in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City; Saturday, 3:30 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Houston hits the road against Oklahoma City looking to prolong its three-game road winning streak.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are 30-8 against Western Conference opponents. Oklahoma City averages 120.2 points and has outscored opponents by 12.3 points per game.<\/p>\n
The Rockets have gone 17-15 against Western Conference opponents. Houston scores 115.2 points while outscoring opponents by 5.1 points per game.<\/p>\n
The Thunder make 48.8% of their shots from the field this season, which is 2.9 percentage points higher than the Rockets have allowed to their opponents (45.9%). The Rockets are shooting 47.2% from the field, 4.0% higher than the 43.2% the Thunder’s opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
The teams square off for the third time this season. The Thunder won the last matchup 111-91 on Jan. 16. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 20 points to help lead the Thunder to the victory.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Chet Holmgren is averaging 17.7 points, 8.6 rebounds and two blocks for the Thunder. Isaiah Joe is averaging 2.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant is averaging 26 points, 5.4 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Rockets. Alperen Sengun is averaging 18.5 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Thunder: 5-5, averaging 116.3 points, 43.0 rebounds, 25.2 assists, 8.4 steals and 5.8 blocks per game while shooting 48.4% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 108.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Rockets: 6-4, averaging 107.6 points, 48.1 rebounds, 25.2 assists, 10.2 steals and 6.8 blocks per game while shooting 44.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 107.8 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Thunder: Luguentz Dort: day to day (knee), Ajay Mitchell: day to day (abdominal), Nikola Topic: out (groin), Alex Caruso: day to day (injury management), Jalen Williams: out (thigh), Isaiah Hartenstein: day to day (eye), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: out (abdominal), Thomas Sorber: out for season (knee).<\/p>\n
Rockets: Jae’Sean Tate: day to day (wrist), Fred VanVleet: out for season (acl), Tari Eason: day to day (injury management), Steven Adams: out for season (ankle).<\/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":"Houston Rockets (31-19, fourth in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (40-12, first in the Western Conference)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[63466,732,9121,56,58,57,6539,154],"class_list":["post-153494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-63466","tag-article","tag-athlete-injuries","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-nba-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}