Adams scored 16 points and grabbed seven rebounds in OKC’s 108-101 win over the Pistons, his best offensive outing in nearly a month.
Lost in the talk at the trade deadline about Danilo Gallinari was the fact that Steven Adams is also staying in Oklahoma City for the remainder of the season.
It didn’t always look like that was the case.
Adams was one of the players that Sam Presti made available, and there was significant chatter leading up to the Feb. 6 deadline that the Atlanta Hawks could make a run at securing the veteran center.
But the rumors never turned into anything significant, and as such, Adams is staying in OKC. And the benefit to keeping him was on display immediately on Friday night against a Detroit Pistons team that had just traded away Andre Drummond.
Before the game even started, Pistons coach Dwayne Casey told reporters, including Maddie Lee of The Oklahoman, that Adams “presents a different problem”.
“It’s probably going to be a tag-team situation tonight with him. He’s one of the solid centers in our league, excellent passer, playing very well with the other three guards that they have playing.”
Adams spent most of the evening going against 22-year old Thon Maker. Although Maker finished with 19 points and 7 rebounds, there were two series late in the fourth quarter where Adams made a difference defensively.
As noted by Lee, “on consecutive possessions, Adams fought for defensive rebounds, leveraging his size to gain possession. The first ended in a miss on the other end. The second put the ball in the hands of Chris Paul for a stepback jump shot that gave the Thunder a 103-95 lead”.
Adams scored 16 points, his best outing almost a month thanks to a nagging ankle injury that he suffered at the beginning of January in a win over the Rockets.
Though he has been hampered as of late, his teammates are acutely aware of the benefits of having Adams on the floor.
“He handled it very well,” Thunder guard Dennis Schroder said of the mismatch Friday. “We need him to be aggressive to be successful going forward. He’s a hell of a player. On the defensive end he’s helping us a lot, so we’ve gotta reward him a little bit on the offensive end. He did it tonight, showed that he makes something happen.”
Oklahoma City will need Adams on both ends of the floor on Sunday when Boston comes to town to put their six-game win streak on the line.
Tip-off inside Chesapeake Energy Arena is at 2:30 p.m. CT.
