DALLAS, TX — In what ended up being a close game, the Oklahoma City Thunder withstood a fourth-quarter comeback by the Dallas Mavericks on Friday night at American Airlines Center to prevail 109-106, which was OKC’s seventh straight win.
The Thunder (33-12) were led offensively by Kevin Durant’s 24 points. Russell Westbrook added 16, a total matched by Enes Kanter off the bench.
“Our team did a great job of sticking together, did a great job with the runs they made, got some big stops and finished the game,” Westbrook said postgame.
For the first time this season, OKC big man Steven Adams wasn’t in the starting five. Adams was a late scratch after sustaining an elbow injury during pregame warmups.
Veteran Nick Collison replaced Adams in the lineup and hauled in 11 rebounds, six of which were on the offensive glass, where OKC edged Dallas 17-7.
“I was happy with how I played. I haven’t started a lot. I did earlier in my career some, but I’ve been working hard at trying to stay ready and staying in shape. I was ready to go,” Collison said. “Dallas [is] a team we’re pretty familiar with and I was happy with how I did.”
The Thunder led by as many as 17 in the second half, but Dallas made a late push and had Chandler Parsons drained a three-pointer as time expired, the Mavericks (25-20) would’ve headed to overtime for a fifth consecutive home game.
With their next game at Barclays Center on Sunday against the Brooklyn Nets, OKC was a bit rushed to depart Dallas after the game so they could arrive in the New York area ahead of this weekend’s blizzard.
But Collison, who was one of the unsung stars of this win, OKC’s third of the season against Dallas, summed up the Thunder winning streak rather perfectly before heading out to the team bus.
“Well, I think we’re getting better at the things that we set out to do better this year. We’re passing the ball better. Tonight wasn’t as good, but a lot of these games where we’re getting a lot of assists, we’re getting easy shots,” Collison said.
Westbrook feels a string of stronger performances on the defensive end has been key for the Thunder, who last lost on Jan. 10 at the Portland Trail Blazers.
That’s an assessment Collison agrees with.
“The defense is trending upward. We were good for a while and then we had a bad stretch and now we’ve been good, so we want to stay consistent the rest of the year and just become a good defensive team and not a team that just defends well in spurts, so that’s what we’re working on,” Collison said.
OKC’s closest win of this streak came on Friday in Big D.
And first-year Thunder head coach Billy Donovan saw plenty he liked from this team in the win, but as always, there were also plenty of teachable moments.
“Well, we were fortunate coming down the stretch, had pretty good control of the game. Give them credit, we knew they were going to make a run at some point. I really thought we could have kept our distance had we made some shots. We were manufacturing good offense, just the ball didn’t go down. We were able just to kind of hang in there,” Donovan said. “Hopefully we learn from this, try and grow and get better. I think our defense has improved. Just trying to keep getting better.”
After facing the Nets on Sunday, the Thunder will continue the road trip on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks before concluding the trek on Wednesday in the Twin Cities against the Minnesota Timberwolves.