Westbrook carries Thunder past Nuggets

OKLAHOMA CITY — When Russell Westbrook’s shot is dropping, the Oklahoma City guard is one of the most lethal players in the NBA. However, when he is getting his teammates involved, the Thunder are truly dangerous.

Westbrook showed the latter side when the Thunder took on the struggling Denver Nuggets. Scoring 21 points and dishing out a career-high 17 assists, he led Oklahoma City to a 119-94 victory over the Nuggets Sunday at the Chesapeake Energy Arena.

“Like I’ve said since the start of the year, he’s the best point guard in basketball,” Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. “He does so many great things and he does it every night. He’s a no excuse player. You would have thought he hadn’t played in a month with all the energy he came out with.”

The Thunder played without forward Kevin Durant for the second consecutive game after he had surgery on his right foot earlier in the day. Despite that, they improved to 31-25 on the season have won eight of their last nine contests.

The Nuggets’ slide continued as they have now lost eight of their last nine games. At 20-35, they are still third in the Northwest Division.

“They were doing everything more crisper than we were,” Denver coach Brian Shaw said. “And they were going after the ball harder than we were. They had 17 fast-break points at halftime and that’s just a matter of will power. They were just running harder to the other end than we were.”

Oklahoma City forward Serge Ibaka posted 20 points, eight rebounds and eight blocked shots. In his second game with the Thunder, Enes Kanter scored 20 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. Guard Dion Waiters came off the bench to score 17 points on 7-of-15 shooting.

Guard Ty Lawson led Denver with 17 points on 6-of-12 shooting. Forward Danilo Gallinari added 16 points.

“As you can see from the game, we didn’t play very good defense,” Gallinari said. “Especially from the beginning. So they were able to do whatever they wanted to do. They were able to play freely with no pressure. We didn’t play any defense for the whole game.”

Even without Durant, Oklahoma City had no problems scoring to start the game. Led by Westbrook and Kanter, they shot 60 percent from the field in the first quarter as they took a 36-18 lead.

Kanter has quickly shown why the Thunder coveted the big post man. Along with the points, rebounds and rim protection, he displayed all out hustle. Late in the second quarter, he hurdled two rows going after a loose ball. The effort resulted in a 3-pointer for forward Kyle Singler and a 24-point lead.

When you play with Serge, you just feel more comfortable,” Kanter said. “You know he has your back.”

Denver looked to Gallinari to try and get the team going. He was able to knock in 10 first-half points.

But the Nuggets had no answers on defense. The Thunder racked up 21 assists in first half, which is a franchise record. They led 67-42 at halftime.

Westbrook’s ability to spread the ball around allowed him to hit a career high in assists. He broke his previous high of 16 midway through the third period on a bounce pass to a sprinting Ibaka down the middle of the lane for a thunderous dunk.

Despite his stellar play on the season, Westbrook said he isn’t concerned about recent MVP talk.

“Just taking care of business,” Westbrook said. “My job is to come out, lead my team to victory.”