Entering Sunday's contest, Charlotte is two games back of a three-way tie for seventh place in the Eastern Conference. To join that flurry of playoff hopefuls, they'll need to win as many games as possible with just six remaining in the regular season. That will be a difficult task as they have to travel to Oklahoma City on Sunday afternoon. After the Thunder had won multiple meetings in a row against them, the Hornets were able to break the hex with a 123-112 victory back on January 4th. Tipoff is set for 3:00 PM Eastern time and the game can be seen on FSN Oklahoma and FSN Southeast.
Hornets (35-41, 4th Southeast)
Charlotte comes in having won their last two games against Toronto and Denver. The offense has been humming with an 113-point average in the previous five games. Most importantly, they've been outscoring their opponents by six points in the fourth quarter during that stretch.
Shooting guard Nicolas Batum (15.2 ppg, 6.4 rpg) was the scoring leader against the Thunder last time out with 28 points. He's been hovering around that average with 28 total points in the last couple of games. Point guard Kemba Walker (23 ppg, 5.5 apg) hit 31 points against Denver last time out. He's reached the 30-point plateau twice in the last four games.
Thunder (43-32, 2nd Northwest)
Oklahoma City has been wildly inconsistent this season, especially on defense.
As an example, last week they gave up just 97 points to Philadelphia and 91 points to Dallas, but in the middle of those two games, they allowed Houston to truck along with 137 points. The most consistent part of the Thunder has been Russell Westbrook (31.8 ppg, 10.6 rpg, 10.4 apg).
Westbrook had team highs of 33 points, 15 boards, and eight assists in their previous meeting with the Hornets.
The team still lost that game despite having a 51-43 rebounding advantage. Power forward Taj Gibson (11 ppg, 6.4 rpg) is questionable for the match as he's still dealing with an illness that held him out of the contest against San Antonio.
Oklahoma City is a 5.5-point favorite at home, and the total O/U is set at 214.5 points. Charlotte is 1-9-1 against the spread in their last 11 meetings at Oklahoma City.
