For Billy Donovan, it boiled down to two good practices.
“We really cleaned up some stuff defensively,” Donovan said Friday, “and the things we struggled in with Sacramento I thought we did a much better job in the game.”
It was just five days removed from a cringe-worthy defensive performance by the Thunder in a 131-120 loss to Sacramento and less than 24 hours from a nail-biter of a 101-95 loss to Boston. The contrast had been stark.
Hustle plays were pretty much the only defensive positives Donovan could identify after Sunday’s game, and as he went back through the film, the list of things to work on kept growing.