OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma City Thunder showed Wednesday night that they dont always need to have Kevin Durant score in the fourth quarter to win a close game. Stephen Strasburg Authentic . Durant scored just two of his 26 points in the final 12 minutes and his teammates -- including Derek Fisher, Jeremy Lamb and Reggie Jackson -- stood in the gap, helping Oklahoma City pull away for a 106-97 win over a Minnesota Timberwolves team without Kevin Love and two other starters. Jackson added 20 points (seven in the fourth quarter) and nine assists for the Thunder, who won for the 12th time in their last 13 games and became the NBAs first team this season to 40 wins. The Thunder won for the ninth straight time at home against Minnesota, which entered the game 3 1/2 games behind Dallas in the race for the eighth and final playoff spot from the Western Conference. The Thunder have won eight straight home games and are 15-1 this season against Western Conference foes at Chesapeake Energy Arena. "We just focus on doing our job every night and living with the results and theyve been pretty good for a while now," Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks said. "We have expectations to a standard that we want to play at and I think weve done a good job with that going into the All-Star break. "This is funky time for a lot of teams because a lot of players are probably thinking about the break and what theyre doing, getting their plans together. Weve never been a team that has done that and I dont anticipate that happening this year." Love, an All-Star forward, sat out with a stiff neck after taking a hard fall Tuesday in a win over the Los Angeles Lakers. Center Nikola Pecovic (ankle injury) and forward Corey Brewer (family leave) also didnt play for the Timberwolves. Minnesota coach Rick Adelman said he was proud of the way his undermanned team fought. "I think it shows that these guys compete," Adelman said. "They werent afraid to go play them with three starters out. It gave the other guys an opportunity to play. I couldnt be prouder of the way they competed. We just ran a little bit out of gas at the end." With Minnesota devoting its defensive energies to stopping Durant, other Thunder players made the key plays in the final minutes. The score was tied in the closing seconds of the third quarter when Fisher attempted a 3-pointer from the corner that appeared to be long, but Minnesotas Gorgui Dieng accidentally tapped it into the basket to give the Thunder an 80-77 lead. Fisher finished with 13 points, his second-best offensive outing of the season. "Ive never seen that before," Durant said of the goaltending call on Dieng. "That guy is a rookie . so Im sure hes going to learn from that one. But that gave us a boost and at the start of the fourth those guys came out and played extremely hard and thats what we needed." Lamb opened the fourth quarter with another 3-pointer to push Oklahoma Citys lead to six points. The Thunder finished off the 16-4 run with a dunk by Lamb with 7:17 left that made it 93-81, but Oklahoma City suddenly went cold from the field. Durant was called for a technical foul with 4:39 left after protesting a no-call, but Ricky Rubio missed the ensuing free throw, leaving the score at 93-86. Minnesota pulled within 95-89 after a 3-pointer by Robbie Hummel with 3:45 left, but the Timberwolves came no closer. "We came into the game aggressive and we fought all the way through, but in the last five minutes, I think we missed too many free throws and easy shots while they made shots at the end," said Rubio, who had 19 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Thabo Sefolosha, who missed his first seven 3-point attempts, made one from the corner with 1:43 left to extend the Thunders lead to 100-90 and Minnesota came no closer than nine points the rest of the way. "Theyre NBA players, too," Durant said of his teammates. "Its not like Ive been scoring every point in the fourth. We play off each other. Guys hit big shots and we got stops. . We play a team game here." Durant, who also had nine rebounds and seven assists, continued his strong play against the Timberwolves. He had a triple-double in a home win over the Timberwolves on Dec. 1 and scored 48 points in a win at Minnesota on Jan. 4 before his outburst Wednesday. The Timberwolves led by as many as six points in the second quarter, but Oklahoma City took a 56-54 lead after Durant swished a 3-pointer at the buzzer. Durant had 16 points, six rebounds and five assists by halftime. Dante Cunningham added 18 points on 9-of-13 shooting for Minnesota. Serge Ibaka had 14 points and seven rebounds for the Thunder. NOTES: Brewer didnt travel with the team following the birth of his son on Tuesday. The Timberwolves say hes expected to return for Fridays game at New Orleans. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute replaced Brewer in the starting lineup. ... Durant was the Western Conference player of the month for January. He averaged 35.9 points per game while shooting 54.9 per cent during the month, leading Oklahoma City to a 10-game winning streak. He scored 30 or more points in 12 straight games. ... Olympic gold-medal winning gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci, who live in nearby Norman, attended the game. ... Hummel saw his first action since Jan. 6 at Philadelphia. He played 17 minutes and scored five points. .. Oklahoma City C Kendrick Perkins matched his season high with 12 rebounds. Bryce Harper Authentic . Canada dropped a 24-21 decision to Zimbabwe before bouncing back with a 10-7 win over Spain. All three sides finished with seven points apiece in Pool E to move on to the final eight while the Philippines was last with only three points. Gio Gonzalez Red Jersey . Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema scored two goals each Wednesday night in a 6-1 rout of Schalke in the first leg of their second-round matchup. "We played a very, very good match," Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said. "We got well into the match, scored two early goals and that opened the game and left us able to counter and to use the speed of our players. OAKLAND, Calif. -- By the time reporters were allowed in the visiting locker room at Oracle Arena late Monday night, most of the Philadelphia 76ers already had cleared out. The television in the centre of the room was turned off. There were no box scores from the game on players chairs -- which is typical after most NBA games -- and there were no smiles to be had by anybody. After losing by a total of 88 points on consecutive nights in California, the 76ers just want to forget what happened. "Not going to turn on TV or read the papers," forward Evan Turner said. Marreese Speights scored a career-high 32 points to hand his former team a near-record setback, leading the Golden State Warriors past the woeful 76ers 123-80. Philadelphia nearly matched the NBA mark for the largest total margin of defeat in consecutive games. The Detroit Pistons lost by 95 points combined in back-to-back games in November 1966, according to STATS. "Its hard for everybody," Sixers coach Brett Brown said. "The reality of it is they have put in so much time and despite all the turmoil, its a group thats been together, stayed together. At times, you look up and you have to keep going and keep on playing with some level of dignity, and its hard doing that." After losing 123-78 at the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday night in a game it trailed by 56 points in the third quarter, Philadelphia (15-38) figured it couldnt get much worse. It almost did. Speights finished 12-of-15 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds, and Stephen Curry added 23 points and eight assists to help the Warriors go ahead by 49 in the fourth quarter. "It was a thing of beauty," Golden State coach Mark Jackson said. Michael Carter-Williams scored 24 points, and Turner and Thaddeus Young had 12 points apiece for a rebuilding 76ers team that never put up much of a fight during its seventh straight loss. No other team in NBA history has lost two straight games by at least 40 points each. Philadelphia has now done it twice. The 76ers lost back-to-back games in April 1994 by a combined 93 points, and theyre struggling to explain -- and correct -- what has gone so wrong during this latest stretch. "You just look up at the scoreboard and see a lot of points. I really dont know," Turner said. "Were in the game at one point. We were down by like 10, and then the next thing you know it popped up to like 25 or 30." Philadelphia finishes a three-game road trip Wednesday night at Utah before heading into an All-Star break that cant come soon enouugh. Ryan Zimmerman Red Jersey. Golden State outshot the Sixers 48.9 per cent to 36.7 per cent and outrebounded them 60-38 despite playing without centre Andrew Bogut (left shoulder injury) and backup centre Jermaine ONeal (sore right wrist). David Lee, who had missed the past two games with a sprained left shoulder and strained left hip, had 13 points and 13 rebounds in 31 minutes. Brown said before the game that he was happy his team had a chance to quickly atone for its horrendous showing in Los Angeles. Instead, the 76ers had another embarrassing performance. As if Philadelphias miserable two-day stretch wasnt bad enough, it was capped off by one of its former draft picks. Speights spent his first 2 1/2 seasons in Philadelphia before getting traded to Memphis. He split last season between Memphis and Cleveland before signing with the Warriors as a free agent last summer. The reserve big man made his first seven jumpers, including a 3-pointer and a layup through traffic that started a three-point play, to give Golden State a 47-27 lead midway through the second quarter. "They got real hot," Carter-Williams said. On his eighth attempt, Speights missed a 26-footer that had nearly everybody in the announced sellout crowd of 19,596 waiting to roar before it caromed off the rim. Speights left to a standing ovation before the Warriors went ahead 66-33 at halftime. Some fans even serenaded Speights with chants of "M-V-P!" after he began another three-point play in the third quarter that stretched Golden States lead to 92-48. "That was so funny. I started laughing," Speights said. "At least they still have trust in me, so its always good to have fans on your side." The defeat couldve been much worse, too. Jackson put in most of his reserves before the fourth quarter, though the highlights didnt stop from one of them. Speights made a step-back jumper to put Golden State up 107-58 with 9:41 to play before leaving to another ovation with 3:02 left. Brown kept most of his starters in until the final minutes to slice the deficit down a little. "Dont anybody feel sorry for us," Brown said. "We will wake up and be (OK) tomorrow." NOTES: The Warriors swept the season series against the 76ers for the first time since the 2007-08 season. ... Sixers reserve Hollis Thompson missed the game with a sprained right ankle. ... The league announced Monday that Curry received the NBAs Kia Community Assist Award for January for his generosity and ongoing charitable efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area. cheap jerseys from china cheap jerseys ' ' '
