Boston Celtics (43-22, second in the Eastern Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (51-15, first in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City; Thursday, 9:30 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Boston Celtics take the court in a matchup between the NBA’s top two defenses.<\/p>\n
The Thunder have gone 27-7 at home. Oklahoma City ranks fifth in the league with 34.5 defensive rebounds per game led by Chet Holmgren averaging 7.1.<\/p>\n
The Celtics are 22-12 on the road. Boston ranks fifth in the Eastern Conference shooting 36.4% from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
The Thunder make 48.2% of their shots from the field this season, which is 4.1 percentage points higher than the Celtics have allowed to their opponents (44.1%). The Celtics average 15.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.3 more made shots on average than the 14.2 per game the Thunder give up.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Holmgren is averaging 17.3 points, nine rebounds and 1.9 blocks for the Thunder. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 15.4 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Derrick White is scoring 17.5 points per game and averaging 4.4 rebounds for the Celtics. Sam Hauser is averaging 2.6 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Thunder: 9-1, averaging 113.7 points, 44.7 rebounds, 25.4 assists, 9.1 steals and 4.7 blocks per game while shooting 45.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 106.9 points per game.<\/p>\n
Celtics: 7-3, averaging 109.6 points, 50.0 rebounds, 26.6 assists, 4.9 steals and 5.7 blocks per game while shooting 45.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 100.4 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Thunder: Alex Caruso: day to day (hip), Branden Carlson: day to day (back), Jalen Williams: day to day (hamstring), Chet Holmgren: day to day (illness), Thomas Sorber: out for season (knee), Isaiah Hartenstein: day to day (calf).<\/p>\n
Celtics: Nikola Vucevic: out (finger), Payton Pritchard: day to day (neck).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boston Celtics (43-22, second in the Eastern Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (51-15, first in the Western Conference)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3783],"tags":[84299,1297,7,6,446,310,475,179,3966,3965,66,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-652337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-84299","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-basketball","13":"tag-oklahoma","14":"tag-oklahoma-city","15":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","16":"tag-oklahomacity","17":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116209468400747064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652337","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=652337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}