It may have taken a while, but on Friday night, the Thunder got their seventh win of the season at the expense of the New Orleans Pelicans.
That made Chris Paul quite happy.
It’s no secret that the 15-year pro isn’t in the most enviable predicament. Clearly in the latter stage of his career, Paul — who will be 35 years old when the season ends — wants to contend. Instead, he’s on the rebuilding Thunder.
To his credit, though, Paul has been a model citizen and had provided a steady hand for the young club. Perhaps that more than anything else makes him a good authority on the teams’ accomplishments. The below locker room video comes courtesy of The Oklahoman after the team’s Friday night victory.
The energy was amazing. [Deonte Burton] coming off the bench was huge, Dennis [Schroder] just kept hitting timely shots, Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] played a little bit of defense tonight… It was just probably our best team win of the year.
Schroder scored a team-high 25 points on 11-for-24 shooting from the field and helped Oklahoma City overcome a slow third quarter as well as a relatively subpar individual effort from Paul, who scored just seven points to go along with six rebounds and five assists.
Chris Paul: “It was just probably our best team win of the year.” pic.twitter.com/9AONdCWvqp
— Maddie Lee (@maddie_m_lee) November 30, 2019
The fact that the bench helped pull out the win wasn’t lost on Paul when she spoke about what he’s seen from them.
Just playing with confidence, as they should, and most of all, playing together. The biggest thing about it is just we never gave up. We closed out the game on defense and I think once we continue to figure out that our defense will win games for us more than our offense, then we’ll be fine.
Oklahoma City has now won two of their last three games and will host the Pelicans on Sunday as the teams complete a home-and-home series.