Giddey's OKC Withstand 36ers

The Adelaide 36ers couldn’t quite reproduce their magic from five days earlier but will now return home full of confidence to open NBL23 after taking encouraging signs from their hit out against Josh Giddey and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Sixers became the talk of the basketball world with their performance on Sunday night (American time) to become the first NBL team to beat an NBA outfit in 17 attempts. They did so in style too by connecting on 24 three-pointers in the 134-124 triumph against the Phoenix Suns.

That showed in remarkable fashion what CJ Bruton's team is capable of coming into his second season as coach, but it was always going to be even harder to reproduce that sort of offensive explosion, and that proved the case.

The Sixers travelled to Oklahoma City on Thursday night to take on the Thunder at Paycom Centre. That created its own sense of intrigue with Giddey leading the OKC charge against the NBL team that he played with prior to being drafted to the NBA.

Making life more challenging for Adelaide was the absence of seven-time club MVP Daniel Johnson with an ankle injury, and this time it was Oklahoma City getting off to the hot shooting start to set up the eventual 131-98 victory.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">?‍???<br><br>Craig Randall II continues to do his best impersonation of a walking bucket and leads the <a href="https://twitter.com/Adelaide36ers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Adelaide36ers</a> with 24 points on 10/20<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBLxNBA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBLxNBA</a> live on Kayo Freebies and <a href="https://t.co/KyKI4CkgOD">https://t.co/KyKI4CkgOD</a> <a href="https://t.co/PgHzrZvS1S">pic.twitter.com/PgHzrZvS1S</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1578205143090495488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Despite that scoreline, the 36ers outscored the Thunder 28-23 in the fourth quarter and scored 71 points over the last three quarters in another example of the offensive firepower they are bringing into the NBL season.

Adelaide ran into a hot offensive performance from OKC who shot 52.5 per cent from the floor and knocked down 20/40 from downtown.

There was still plenty of positives to take out of it from a 36ers perspective and Craig Randall had another 27 points and eight assists while hitting 5/11 from three-point land.

Robert Franks added 20 points and seven rebounds, Antonius Cleveland 19 points, three boards and two steals, and Sunday Dech nine points, four rebounds and two assists.

Hyrum Harris contributed eight points and six rebounds, Mitch McCarron six points and seven assists, Kyrin Galloway five points and two rebounds, and Anthony Drmic four points and three boards.

Josh Giddey put up 10 points, six assists, five rebounds and two blocks for Oklahoma City with Tre Mann scoring 26 points, Lindy Waters 23 and Eugene Omoruyi 19.

Following their blistering start back against the Phoenix Suns, the 36ers weren’t quite able to replicate that against the Thunder with the home team scoring the game's first four points, and opening up an early 9-2 lead after a triple from Tre Mann.

Craig Randall worked Adelaide back into the contest but another three ball from Mann pushed OKC's lead out once more. He nailed his third of the opening six minutes soon after to put the Thunder on top 19-8.

Josh Giddey then pushed the pace and finished with a finger roll and he helped Oklahoma City to the 35-16 lead by the end of one.

A couple of three-pointers to start the second quarter from Lindy Waters and Aleksej Pokusevski pushed the Thunder's lead out to 25 before the Sixers got a steadying three-pointer of their own from Robert Franks.

While Randall did hit another triple to go to 16 points shortly before half-time with Mitch McCarron dishing out a sixth assist, the Thunder's offence was flowing as they led 73-43 going into half-time.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Highlight reelin&#39; with Cleveland ??<a href="https://twitter.com/ac_uno1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ac_uno1</a> showing off the handle and hops!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBLxNBA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBLxNBA</a> live + free on Kayo Freebies + <a href="https://t.co/KyKI4CkgOD">https://t.co/KyKI4CkgOD</a> <a href="https://t.co/XTVab8GUaf">pic.twitter.com/XTVab8GUaf</a></p>&mdash; The NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1578191598000930816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The OKC lead did get out to as much as 40 points just before three quarter-time but the 36ers were able to fight the game out strongly.

There were some nice moments through the fourth quarter including a couple of strong finishes from Hyrum Harris around the rim, a couple more triples from Randall, impressive plays from Antonius Cleveland and then the last five points from young gun Kyrin Galloway.

The 36ers will now make the journey home to prepare to open their NBL23 season in the opening game of Round 3 at home to the Tasmania JackJumpers on Thursday night.

NBLxNBA 2022

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER 131 (Mann 26, Waters 23, Omoruyi 19)
ADELAIDE 36ERS 98 (Randall 27, Franks 20, Cleveland 19) 

BOX SCORE