Recap: Thunder blown out vs Pacers due to offensive struggles

On Tuesday night Oklahoma City was on the road versus the Indiana Pacers looking for their first road win of the season. The Thunder were looking to bounce back from a two point loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday.

Hamidou Diallo would be starting in place of Terrance Ferguson in this game who was out for personal reasons.

The first half was a defensive one as at the half both teams were shooting under 40% from the field. Also, both the Pacers and Thunder were a combined 3/20 from three.

However, Indiana still manage to hold a 52-42 lead at half. That lead would quickly extend in the third quarter where the Pacers led by as much as 26 points.

Indiana would only cushion their lead over OKC and ended up winning by a final score of 111-85.

What went wrong

• Thunder’s Poor Shooting

In today’s NBA scoring under 100 points is terrible, and that’s exactly what the Thunder did tonight. OKC only scored 85 total points and no player managed to score over 14 points.

Oklahoma City matched their season low in points tonight, and shot 36% from the field which is their worse of the season thus far.

The Thunder’s scoring went down as the game progressed as their highest scoring quarter was the first with 25 points.

“We definitely struggled on offense, I thought they were physical with us in terms of our cutting, and with our movement.” Coach Billy Donovan said.

• Pacers Starting Five

While the Thunder were struggling offensively the starting five for Indiana carried them offensively tonight. Indiana scored 111 points while having Myles Turner out with a sprained ankle.

The scoring for the Pacers started early as Malcolm Brogdon, TJ Warren and Domantas Sabonis all were all in double figures at halftime. Sabonis in fact had a double-double with rebounds in the first half.

Aaron Holiday became the fourth member of the starting five to score double figures, as he finished the game with 17 points of his own.

OKC managed to hold the Pacers to only 30% from three, but Indiana scored elsewhere and shot 49% from the field.

The Thunder will have some time to forget about this game as they don’t play again till Friday when they host the Philadelphia 76ers.