Oklahoma City Thunder guard Hamidou Diallo sat down for his postgame Zoom press conference donning cap with a New York Yankees logo.
This weekend, he was the king of his home state. He scored 23 points against the New York Knicks on Friday before posting 25 against the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday in a 129-116 win.
Diallo was one of three Thunder players who set a season high in scoring in the huge win over the Nets and Kevin Durant.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored the first seven OKC points of the game and finished the first quarter with 14 points. In total, he had 31, the first time he’s passed the 30-point mark this season.
Some of it was with star forward Kevin Durant, listed at 6-foot-10, guarding him.
“Obviously Kevin Durant is one of the better players in this league, and me being a competitor and a guy that ultimately wants to be one of those guys, I love challenges like that,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I just wanted to compete. We was gonna have to guard him, and he was gonna have to guard me. We was gonna find out. It was nothing but competition.”
His 14 points in the first quarter was good. The bad part was that those 14 points accounted for almost half of the Thunder’s 29 total, while the Nets tallied 41.
Then the bench came through for the third game in a row.
The Thunder went on a 10-3 run to open the quarter. Actually, let me rephrase – Diallo went on a 10-3 run to start the quarter.
After Nets forward Taurean Prince hit a 3 to open the quarter, Diallo answered with a 3 of his own. He then stole the ball and got to the free throw line off the fast break. He hit another 3 and then worked quickly in transition off a defensive rebound to get another shot at the rim.
The Thunder cut the lead to six, which was also the deficit at the 6:55 mark when center Al Horford checked into the game.
Horford went on an 8-2 run on his own to tie the game up at 51. He scored 22 points, a mark he had only reached one time since Nov. 4, 2019.
“We pushed Al’s button a couple times to get him a couple post-ups just to give him some balance to his game,” Daigneault said. “Obviously he’s done a great job popping for us.”
The Thunder went into the half trailing 63-57. They would trail by as many as eight in the third quarter before embarking on a 25-9 run. Lu Dort had nine points during this stretch and Horford had seven.
By the end of the frame, Oklahoma City had put up 37 to Brooklyn’s 19 and broken the game open for a 94-81 lead. Those 37 points were the highest the team had scored in a quarter this year, and made up for the 41 that the Nets had in the first quarter.
The Thunder rode out the fourth quarter for a win, building a lead as large as 18 before winning by 13.
Oklahoma City entered the game with the second-fewest points per game in the league and had only crossed the 110-point mark one time. They dominated the final three quarters against the Nets.
“The game got dicey a little bit early … I just didn’t think we had the best energy in the first quarter,” Daigneault said. “We came out of halftime, we kind of committed to having a different level of energy on offense and on defense … All 10 guys that touched the floor in the third did an unbelievable job of amping it up.
Forward Isaiah Roby, who played in place of big Mike Muscala, had 13 points in 19 minutes off the bench. Muscala was active but Daigneault had wanted to get Roby more minutes, so he thought this game, coming off a rib injury against the Knicks, was a good one to rest Muscala during.
Dort finished with 13 points and point guard George Hill had 14.
Durant finished with 36 points and 11 rebounds while taking 15 free throw attempts. Caris LeVert had 21 points.
In the end, Gilgeous-Alexander made the biggest difference. He was aggressive inside, finshing nine of his 11 made field goals in the paint, and went 7-for-8 from the free throw line. He also had seven assists and six rebounds.
Normally cool and collected, Gilgeous-Alexander was animated during points of this game as he racked up his numbers.
“Shai’s going to get going and he’s going to talk about it, and he’s going to bring the swag to the game each and every day,” Diallo said.
“He’s going to express himself. That’s just the type of player he is. He can definitely express himself when he wants to, and at times he can just do what he do very quietly and let his game speak for himself. But today he expressed himself.”
The Thunder can go home satisfied from a road trip in which they won four of five games.
“I think all of us across the board wanted the same thing: end the road trip the right way, get the W,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.