The Oklahoma City Thunder needed a spark.
Trailing the Dallas Mavericks by 16 points with roughly five minutes left in the game, it appeared that the Thunder mudded the game as much as they could before Dallas’ talent eventually took over and pulled away.
Then Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault went with an unconventional move of pulling Isaiah Joe off of his bench to see if his outside shooting could give the offense enough juice.
Joe — who wasn’t even on the Thunder roster to start preseason — played the final nine minutes of regulation and overtime and wrote himself into Thunder folklore with a 15-point performance that included going a perfect 4-of-4 from deep.
Daigneault has preached all season long about how there is no set rotation and that anybody could truly play on any given night. It’s an old coach cliche but Daigneault has walked the walk with that mindset so far. Saturday night was the peak of this as Joe came in late and helped lead the Thunder to an unlikely win.
The only way the Thunder had a shot to win this game was to force the Mavericks to play down to their level and force them to play an ugly brand of physical basketball.
It’s fair to say the Thunder were able to achieve this as the Maverick — who entered the night as the best offensive rating team in the league at 122.3 points scored per 100 possession — finished with 111 points and shot 40 percent from the field and 20 percent from three.
Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic scored 31 points, but it came on 8-of-23 shooting and 15-of-19 from the free-throw line.
With such an eventful and fun game, there are several players to hand out grades. Let’s take a look at four Thunder players who stuck out the most in the third win in as many games.