Pacers at Thunder
The Oklahoma City Thunder are stumbling at the wrong time and drifted into the No. 8 spot in the Western Conference with a 115-103 loss at Memphis on Monday. The Thunder will try to turn things around at the expense of another team battling for positioning in its respective conference when they host the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday.
Oklahoma City dropped five of its last six games - a stretch that began with a 108-106 loss at Indiana on March 14 - and shot 40 percent from the floor on Monday against the Grizzlies. "We're competitive," Thunder All-Star forward Paul George told reporters. "We know where we want to get to, we know where we want to be. We know that nights like tonight aren't good enough. It just goes to show that when we don't come ready, we're vulnerable against anybody." The Pacers were enduring their own slide with losses in four straight before putting together one of their most impressive wins of the season in a 124-88 drubbing of the Denver Nuggets on Sunday. "Everything was going in," Indiana shooting guard Bojan Bogdanovic told reporters. "A lot of easy buckets, easy shots. They're the second (place) team (in the West) and we dominated every category tonight."
TV: 8 p.m. ET, ESPN, FS Indiana, FS Oklahoma
ABOUT THE PACERS (45-29): Bogdanovic poured in a team-high 35 points on 13-of-16 shooting - 5-of-6 from beyond the arc - in Sunday's win despite sitting out the fourth quarter. "We needed this game, this kind of game so everybody played, everybody contributed," Bogdanovic told reporters of a performance in which Indiana shot 56 percent from the floor and totaled 34 assists. "I mean, 40-point game. ... Great bounce back for us, especially on our home court." The Pacers head into play on Tuesday with a two-game cushion over the fifth-place Boston Celtics in the battle for homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
ABOUT THE THUNDER (43-31): All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook managed 16 points on 6-of-20 shooting in Monday's loss and blamed himself for the team's struggles. "I'm never worried. I never panic," Westbrook told reporters. "That's my job as a leader to make sure we all understand that in 82 games you may have nights where you don’t have it. It happens like that sometimes. That's not the identity of this team. I take full responsibility of how we come out, especially tonight. That's my fault. As a leader, I gotta make sure that I have my guys ready for games like this. I take full responsibility, especially in losses." Backup point guard Dennis Schroder was one of the bright spots Monday with 25 points on 9-of-14 shooting.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Thunder C Steven Adams, who is shooting 59.4 percent on the season, is 7-of-23 from the floor over the last three games.
2. Pacers PG Darren Collison (quad) missed the last three games and is day-to-day.
3. Indiana's last win in Oklahoma City was a 115-111 overtime triumph on Nov. 20, 2016.