Due to winning too many games for the first two-thirds of the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder have put itself in a corner in terms of lottery odds and essentially need to lose these final two games in Los Angeles in order to keep its fourth-best odds spot. The team was able to complete half of that goal with a 120-101 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers who were missing LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook.
It looked pretty uncertain if the Thunder were going to be able to lose this game as both teams fought back and forth for the first three quarters of the game. Ultimately, the backup Lakers were able to pull away in the fourth quarter and win by 19 points.
Much like the last few games, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault ran a short rotation of essentially just six players with just five of them playing over 15 minutes. Jaylen Hoard continues to impress and really squeezing every drop of juice out of his current 10-day deal that expires after the regular season ends. Hoard isn’t the only getting his money’s worth though as the Thunder played five of the six players who touched the floor this game at least 43 minutes with four of those five players being 10-day deal guys. Let’s take a look at player grades.