The Oklahoma City Thunder are coming off of arguably their most disappointing loss of the season. Kevin Durant managed to score 48 points, but the team lost by double digits to the last-place Utah Jazz. The Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, are riding high following a blowout over the Boston Celtics. Now, Denver will host OKC on national television Thursday night in a battle of Northwest Division rivals. [ad-4468020]<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City (27-8) at Denver (17-7)<\/strong> The Oklahoma City Thunder may be coming off of a bad loss, but they\u2019ve been fantastic on the year. Despite being without Russell Westbrook as of late, the team has lost just eight games on the season, and while three of those have come in the last five contests, there\u2019s no reason to hit the panic button.<\/p>\n If all goes according to plan, Portland won\u2019t have to worry about performing in crunch time. It\u2019s something it has done well almost all season, but the In this one, the Thunder bring in the third-highest points-per-game average in the NBA. They\u2019re scoring 105.8 points per outing, and they\u2019re pulling down the most rebounds of any other squad in the process. The Thunder will look to attack the middle, and to nobody\u2019s surprise, it will be Durant leading the charge.<\/p>\n Anytime you\u2019re facing a superstar like Durant, there\u2019s two mentalities when it comes to defense: double team and hope to contain the star, or let him get his points while containing everybody else. If Denver is smart, it will approach this contest with the latter in mind.<\/p>\n Durant has proven that nobody can stop him this season. He\u2019s averaging the most points in the league by a relative longshot, and he\u2019s doing it at an efficient rate. What he hasn\u2019t shown, however, is a true dominance when it comes to winning. The Thunder\u2019s record is indicative of a contender, but three losses in the last five shows he can\u2019t do it on his own. In fact, take the most recent outing: 48 points and a loss? Denver must follow this defensive blueprint.<\/p>\n Stopping the rest of the roster will help keep the score close, but when it comes down to it, the Thunder are too good to let one drop\u2014even on the road. Don\u2019t be shocked if this one comes down to the final minutes, but don\u2019t be surprised if it\u2019s OKC walking away with the win.<\/p>\n Prediction: Oklahoma City 111 \u2013 Denver 107<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thunder vs. Nuggets The Oklahoma City Thunder are coming off of arguably their most disappointing loss of the season. Kevin Durant managed to score 48 points, but the team lost by double digits to the last-place Utah Jazz. The Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, are riding high following a blowout over the Boston Celtics. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":68034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71552,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71550\/revisions\/71552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThursday, Jan. 9 10:30 PM ET at Pepsi Center<\/strong>
\n [dfads params=’groups=63740&limit=1&return_javascript=0′]<\/strong><\/p>\nOklahoma City<\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nKevin Durant is the leader of this team, and he\u2019s arguably the favorite for the MVP. LeBron James will always be near the top, and chances are he\u2019s still the favorite in many people\u2019s eyes, but with what Durant has done up to this point, he may be on pace to take down the reigning winner of the award.<\/p>\n
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\nAgainst Denver, OKC will look to score and score quickly. The Nuggets aren\u2019t going to win many games with defense this year, and the Thunder know that. You can score a lot of points on this team, and more specifically, you can score a lot of quick points. The Nuggets are the sixth-best team in the league in terms of defensive three-point percentage, but they\u2019re just 25th when it comes to opponent points in the paint, partly because of occasional lapses in transition defense.<\/p>\nDenver<\/h3>\n