(AP) \u2014 Isaiah Joe scored 22 points and Cason Wallace added 20 points and 10 assists to help the short-handed Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 121-113 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Chet Holmgren had 17 points, 15 rebounds and three blocks for Oklahoma City (44-14), which made 21 of 41 3-point attempts (51.2%), including six by Joe, and converted 17 turnovers into 31 points.<\/p>\n
The Thunder played without injured starters Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (abdominal strain) and Jalen Williams (strained right hamstring). and key contributors, Ajay Mitchell (abdominal strain) and Alex Caruso (sprained left ankle).<\/p>\n
Donovan Mitchell, James Harden and Sam Merrill each had 20 points for Cleveland (36-22), which lost for the first time in eight games. The Cavaliers, who made 13 of 39 3-pointers (33.3%), fell behind early but couldn’t complete the comeback against the hot-shooting Thunder.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City turned to the long ball early and built a 28-5 lead on the strength of five 3-pointers, including three by Joe. Oklahoma City made 14 of 22 (63.6%) from beyond the arc before halftime, but by then, Cleveland had cut the lead to 64-55 on a jumper by Mitchell to beat the buzzer.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers got eight quick points from Merrill in the third quarter, and took a 69-68 lead \u2014 their first of the game \u2014 on a short jumper by Jared Allen. Back-to-back 3-pointers by Jared McCain and Joe gave the Thunder an 82-75 advantage. But Cleveland scored 11 of the next 14 points, and got a 3-pointer by Jaylon Tyson to tie the score 86-all.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City got consecutive 3s from Lu Dort, Kenrich Williams and Wallace to build a 102-95 lead in the fourth. Back-to-back jumpers by Isaiah Hartenstein, who had 10 points in the quarter, gave the Thunder a 106-98 lead they never relinquished.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Cavaliers: Host New York on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Thunder: Visit Toronto on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) \u2014 Isaiah Joe scored 22 points and Cason Wallace added 20 points and 10 assists to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[1112,2097,7,306,305,193,3846,646,6,26415],"class_list":["post-618865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-ap","tag-associated-press","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-clevelandcavaliers","tag-loss","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-thunder"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116117168867100728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618865","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=618865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}