{"id":21419,"date":"2025-10-22T12:14:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/oklahoma-city-thunder-start-nba-title-defence-with-overtime-win-against-houston-rockets\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T12:14:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:14:53","slug":"oklahoma-city-thunder-start-nba-title-defence-with-overtime-win-against-houston-rockets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/oklahoma-city-thunder-start-nba-title-defence-with-overtime-win-against-houston-rockets\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City Thunder start NBA title defence with overtime win against Houston Rockets"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored the winning points deep into double overtime as the Oklahoma City Thunder started their NBA title defence with a 125-124 victory over the Houston Rockets.<\/b><\/p>\n

Last season’s MVP scored 35 points, including two from the free-throw line with just 2.3 seconds remaining in second overtime, to get the champions off to a positive start.<\/p>\n

Houston’s Alperun Sengun top-scored with 39 and also hit a career-high five three-pointers.<\/p>\n

But Chet Holmgren, who scored 28 points for the Thunder, played a major role alongside match-winner Gilgeous-Alexander.<\/p>\n

“Grit, determination and defence,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of their performance.<\/p>\n

“We know that when we do it (on defence) we give ourselves a chance no matter what’s going on – makes, misses, good luck or bad luck. We did enough defence to get the win. We’re pretty rusty, but it’s a good start.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored the winning points deep into double overtime as the Oklahoma City Thunder started their NBA title defence with a 125-124 victory over the Houston Rockets. Last season’s MVP scored 35 points, including two from the free-throw line with just 2.3 seconds remaining in second overtime, to get the champions off to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21421,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21419\/revisions\/21421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}