Cavs Best Thunder In OKC

On Sunday, February 21, 2016, the defending Eastern Conference Champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, traveled to the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to take on the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Cavs came in with the third best record in the league only behind the defending Champion Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs. The Thunder, on the other hand, came into the game with the fourth best record in the league. This game was hyped by many due to the fact that it would pit arguably two of the best current players in the league against each other with both small forwards being absolute juggernauts in LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Both teams also had other stars on their teams with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love for the Cavs and Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka for the Thunder.
The game started off pretty evenly with the Thunder and Cavs battling back-and-forth throughout the whole first quarter. By the time the buzzer sounded after the first 12 minutes of play, the home team led the game 28-27 against the Cavs. However, the second quarter was drastically different, and also very disappointing and underwhelming for the home fans. The Cavaliers, led by Kevin Love, outscored the Thunder the 35-25 to take a 62-53 lead into the second half.
In the third quarter, the Cavs kept up their momentum outscoring the Thunder by 13 points to increase their lead even further to 22 points. The fans hoped for a huge final period from their team to pull off an incredible comeback, but the Thunder was unable to pull off the miracle, and ended up losing the game 92-115, the biggest loss of the season for them.
The two major stories in this game were the rebounding battle and the distribution of work. The Thunder, who are usually a great rebounding team, got out-rebounded by 10 by the Cavs in a lack of hustle. Also, while the Cavs distributed the points evenly throughout the roster, only the big three of the Thunder were able to score above double-digits. Their supporting players will need to work much harder if the Thunder have any hopes of winning an NBA Championship.