On a seven-game winning streak to open the season and seemingly getting better with each contest, the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder will go back on the road Tuesday to face the Los Angeles Clippers in Inglewood, Calif.
The Thunder received 30 points and seven assists from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on Sunday in a 137-106 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans that finished off a 3-0 homestand. Aaron Wiggins scored 15 points while Isaiah Hartenstein had 14 points, a season-best eight assists and a season-high-tying 14 rebounds.
Through two weeks of the season, Oklahoma City has passed every test so far.
Gilgeous-Alexander is the unquestioned star of the show with an average of 33.6 points that is slightly better than the NBA-leading 32.7 points he produced last season while winning the MVP award. He has scored at least 30 points in six of the team’s seven games.
If there is an area of potential improvement for the former Clippers guard, it is his 26.8% shooting from 3-point range, which would be lower than in any full season of his career.
As a rookie for the Clippers in the 2018-19 season, Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 10.8 points with 3.3 assists in all 82 games (73 starts). Los Angeles traded him to Oklahoma City in the ensuing offseason in a deal that brought Paul George to Los Angeles.
“I would be lying to you if I tell you I didn’t get up to play the Clippers every time, for obvious reasons,” Gilgeous Alexander said during Season 2 of the Netflix documentary series “Starting 5.”
“… I wanted to make sure Oklahoma City felt like, when it was all said and done, they won the trade. So (the trade) might have looked one way at the time, but that was my focus, to flip the script.”
The Clippers’ motivation for the move was to pair Kawhi Leonard, who had signed as a free agent, with George. Gilgeous-Alexander became the odd man out in Los Angeles.
The Clippers did make the playoffs in four of the five seasons Leonard and George played together but never advanced past the Western Conference finals. George now plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.
Even in a new Clippers era of Leonard partnering with a different star, James Harden, all while moving into a new arena with every amenity a team could hope for, the return of Gilgeous-Alexander reminds the home fans of the one who got away.
Harden scored 29 points and Leonard added 27 on Monday, but the Clippers fell 120-119 to the Miami Heat, losing for the first time in four home games this season. Leonard missed a 3-pointer just before the buzzer that likely would have won the game.
Los Angeles committed 21 turnovers that Miami turned into 37 points.
“It came down to turning the ball over,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said, while literally scratching his head. “(Fifteen) turnovers in the second half. Same s— over and over, man. Same stuff.”
Los Angeles is now 1-1 in a stretch that will see them play six of seven games in their own building.
Lue said after the Monday defeat that he had yet to determine if veterans Leonard and Bradley Beal would play against the Thunder on the second night of a back-to-back. Leonard said he tweaked his right ankle late in the Heat game.
