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The Oklahoma City Thunder got caught overlooking a short-handed opponent once.
Not twice.
Kevin Durant scored 26 points, Russell Westbrook added 23 and the Thunder pulled away for a 106-84 victory Wednesday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were without All-Star forward Kevin Love and four other injured players.
Oklahoma City had lost its last game on a buzzer-beater against a last-place Washington team saddled by injuries to its top three players…
”We don’t really change anything different when we have a bad game,” said Durant, who blocked four shots. ”Every time we lose and we don’t play well defensively, it’s just miscommunications and lapses. Once we take those out of the game, we’ll be all right.”
Alexey Shved scored 18 points for Minnesota, which announced earlier in the day that Love would miss eight to 10 weeks after breaking his right hand for the second time…
Nikola Pekovic added 17 points and 10 rebounds in the opener of a four-game road trip for the Timberwolves. Derrick Williams, forced into playing time at guard because of all the injuries, had 14 points and a season-high 11 rebounds.
Kevin Martin chipped in 19 points off the bench for Oklahoma City, which had a 12-game winning streak in the series snapped last month in Minnesota. Love had 28 points and Barea scored 14 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter of that 99-93 win.
— Reported by Jeff Latzke of the Associated Press
