San Antonio Holds Off Furious Thunder Comeback

Oklahoma City whittled a 27-point deficit down to two but couldn't completely close the gap in a loss.

Saturday, March 17th 2012, 12:55 am

By: News 9


News9.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – It's almost always the case with a team attempting to pull off a massive comeback.

They use up every ounce of energy they have on the comeback itself, and don't have any juice left to finish it out in the end.

That was the case for the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night as they mounted a furious comeback but fell short in a 114-105 loss to the Spurs.

Things turned ugly quickly for OKC as San Antonio jumped out to an early lead and expanded on it quickly.

The Spurs pushed their lead out to 27 points partway through the second quarter, and it appeared the rout was on.

But Oklahoma City is already becoming infamous for its comebacks, though this one was a little bit deeper hole than the Thunder are used to.

The Thunder slowly began to chip away at the lead, cutting it to 16 on a layup from James Harden with 1:27 to go in the third.

A minute into the fourth, a 3-pointer from Harden cut the lead down to 92-85.

And shortly after that, another 3 from Royal Ivey and a jumper from Kevin Durant had whittled the lead down to 92-90.

The rally sent the home crowd into a frenzy, but appeared to eat up every bit of energy OKC possessed.

San Antonio was more composed down the stretch and mental mistakes from the Thunder led to points on the other end.

The bad news for the Thunder is that the loss essentially counts double against them in the Western Conference Standings.

With the Spurs in second place, their victory cut one complete game off of Oklahoma City's lead in the standings, reducing it from four games to three.

Russell Westbrook led all scorers with 36 in the game, and Kevin Durant had 25.

Tim Duncan had a monster night with 16 points, 19 rebounds and five blocks for the Spurs.

The loss drops OKC to 33-11 on the season while San Antonio jumped to 29-13.

OKC will have a day off before hosting Portland at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday.

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