Thunder at Jazz
The Oklahoma City Thunder staged a comeback for the ages to avoid elimination and now attempt to tie the first-round series against the host Utah Jazz at three games apiece on Friday. Oklahoma City trailed by 25 points with 20 1/2 minutes to play in Wednesday's Game 5 before roaring back to record a 107-99 victory.
Point guard Russell Westbrook scored 33 of his 45 points and in the second half while Paul George tallied 21 of his 34 after halftime as the unexpected explosion kept the Thunder alive. "It was win or go home," Westbrook told reporters. "Regardless of what is going on in the game, you have to give yourself a chance to win, and I thought our guys did a good job of that. They did an amazing job of sticking together." The Jazz will need to put the epic collapse behind them after it looked like they were on their way to finishing off Oklahoma City in five games. "They made adjustments and we didn't make the right adjustments back," Utah guard Donovan Mitchell told reporters. "We will watch the film and figure out what went wrong, but from my analysis right after the game, we just stopped getting back in transition and they just fed off of that."
TV: 10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, FS Oklahoma, AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain (Utah)
ABOUT THE THUNDER: Westbrook didn't even reach 20 points in two of the first four games of the series and was having a ho-hum Game 5 before erupting in MVP-caliber form. Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan was pleased with the reversal in caliber of play but he also made it clear he has no interest in finding himself in a similar situation in Game 6. "I don't look at it like we're carrying any momentum," Donovan told reporters. "We've got to go in there and we've got to play and play better. This is a team that had us down by 25 points. Now, I'm obviously thrilled with the comeback and it was a great job, but you get down 25 points on the road, that's hard to overcome."
ABOUT THE JAZZ: The Utah collapse occurred during a time center Rudy Gobert picked up his fourth foul and then - after an 81-second return - his fifth foul and there was no recovering from the assault. "When Rudy went out, that impacted us. But that said, I thought our struggles on the offensive end impacted our defense too much," Utah coach Quin Snyder told reporters. "We've known during the year if we struggle offensively that our defense has to stay solid. But I thought when they did start making plays and Rudy went out, that we were fighting it, but we didn't execute as well as we needed to offensively." Gobert notched four straight double-doubles and is averaging 14.4 points and 10.8 rebounds in the series.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. George has topped 30 points on three occasions in the series while averaging 28.6 points.
2. Oklahoma City F Carmelo Anthony had just seven points in Game 5 and is averaging 12.8 points on 36.9 percent shooting.
3. Utah F Jae Crowder made six 3-pointers and scored 27 points in Game 5 after averaging just six points over the first four games.