Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault mentioned before the game that the team went through a lot of adversity just getting to Cleveland from Charlotte after the team’s loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Friday.
Daigneault said that the team’s bus got stuck on the road due to the icy road conditions that required staff and coach himself to roll up their sleeves and push the bus. Then after that, the team suffered through flight issues; the team’s plane was put on hold for over five hours before finally deciding to switch flights and arrive in Cleveland in the early morning hours. They had to deal with all of this on top of wrapping up a four-game road trip with the second night of a back-to-back.
Now hearing Daigneault describe all that exhausted me, so I can only imagine what the actual players and staff felt like when they finally arrived to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
The Thunder had every reason to lose by double digits as it felt like everything was working against them. Instead, the team was able to push the most surprising team in the league until the final second of this game. The Cavaliers ultimately won this game, 94-87, but the Thunder deserve a ton of credit for playing on fumes and making this an entertaining game — even if it was a sloppy one. Let’s take a look at player grades.
