Rookie center Branden Carlson scored a season-high 26 points to go with 10 rebounds and three blocked three shots, and the Oklahoma City Thunder wrapped up the best regular season in franchise history with a 115-100 victory over the injury-depleted New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Andrew Wiggins scored a game-high 28 points and Kenrich Williams had 17 points and 12 rebounds for the Thunder (68-14), who never trailed and led by as many as 23 points despite resting all of their usual starters.<\/p>\n
Dillon Jones added 13 points and 10 rebounds in just his third start this season and Isaiah Joe scored 17 for Oklahoma City, which won its last five regular-season games and 16 of its last 17.<\/p>\n
Rookie Antonio Reeves scored 20 points, Jamal Cain added 18 and Lester Quinones 17 for the Pelicans, who had just eight available players as they closed out the season on a seven-game skid.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Robinson-Earl had 10 points and 16 rebounds, and his 3-pointer briefly pulled the Pelicans as close as six at 71-65 before the Thunder pulled away again.<\/p>\n
Takeaways<\/p>\n
Thunder: Even with all of its usual starters held out for rest, Oklahoma City was able to build a 20-point lead in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Pelicans: New Orleans\u2019 final record of 21-61 is the second worst in franchise history and worst since the 2004-05 team went 18-64.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Kenrich Williams, Carlson and Jones each hit 3s during a 9-0 run that gave the Thunder an 84-67 lead, and Oklahoma City led comfortably from then on.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
The Thunder outrebounded the Pelicans 54-47 and turned 17 offensive rebounds into 21 second-chance points.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City opens the first round of the playoffs at home against the team that wins the No. 8 seed in this week\u2019s Western Conference play-in tournament. The Pelicans begin what could be an offseason of upheaval after their worst season since team owner Gayle Benson\u2019s late husband, Tom, bought the club in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rookie center Branden Carlson scored a season-high 26 points to go with 10 rebounds and three blocked three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[500,7,5579,1256,4496,1624,10666,10667,5760,10664,6,478,470,4073,4072,179,675],"class_list":{"0":"post-233121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-andrew-wiggins","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-branden-carlson","11":"tag-dillon-jones","12":"tag-gayle-benson","13":"tag-isaiah-joe","14":"tag-jamal-cain","15":"tag-jeremiah-robinson-earl","16":"tag-kenrich-williams","17":"tag-lester-quinones","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-new-orleans","20":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","21":"tag-neworleans","22":"tag-neworleanspelicans","23":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","24":"tag-pelicans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115034755151034671","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}