Avdija Scores 28 as Blazers Beat the Thunder Again to Complete a Two-Night Sweep

Twice in two nights, the Portland Trail Blazers have beaten the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the second one was the statement. Portland won 118–108 at Moda Center on Wednesday to complete a season-series sweep of the Thunder — backing up Tuesday's 123–103 win — behind Deni Avdija's 28 points and a team-wide barrage of 19 three-pointers. The game swung through 11 lead changes and five ties before Portland owned the closing minutes, and it ended the way Avdija had played all night: with 36 seconds left he stole the ball and ran in the dunk that pushed the lead to 116–106 and sealed it.

Avdija's line reads like a player who decided the matchup personally: 28 points on 9-of-20 shooting, 6-of-6 at the line, six assists, four steals and two blocks in 35 minutes. Around him, Portland's depth told. Sidy Cissoko scored 19 on 6-of-9 — his free throw at 3:56 of the fourth put Portland ahead for good — and Jrue Holiday added 19 with five threes and five assists. And when the game tightened late, Damian Lillard was on the floor doing closer's work: a floater at 2:02, a basket at 1:26, free throws at 1:00, an 18-point night with a team-best +16 in his 32 minutes.

There is a version of this game Portland fans would have scripted for themselves. Lillard — the defining Blazer of the last decade, back in the red jersey — spent the decisive minutes on the floor against the conference's standard-bearer, and his fingerprints are on the exact stretch that decided it. He scored 25 in Tuesday's win and a quieter 18 in this one, and the two nights together read like a player re-introduced to a building that never stopped being his. The sweep will be filed under Avdija's name, and fairly — but the Moda Center crowd knew whose hands the game was in at the end.

Oklahoma City got the game's biggest individual line and lost anyway. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored a game-high 31 — but the shape of it was Portland's defensive game plan working: 9-of-20 from the field, 0-for-7 from three, and 13 of his points manufactured at the free-throw line (13-of-14). Isaiah Hartenstein was excellent (20 points on 10-of-14, 11 rebounds, six assists) and Alex Caruso gave the Thunder 14 points, seven rebounds and three steals, but Oklahoma City's quarter splits tell the story of a team chasing: a 32-point first, an 18-point second, and a 23-point fourth when the game needed saving.

The arithmetic of the sweep is worth sitting with. Portland (8-3) hit 19 threes — 57 of its 118 points from behind the arc — and won the two games against Oklahoma City (8-4) by a combined 30 points in 24 hours. Toumani Camara added 14, Donovan Clingan muscled through 12 rebounds and three blocks, and Robert Williams III scored 10 as the Blazers' second unit kept the pressure on through every rotation. For a Thunder team that has spent two seasons as the West's standard, a back-to-back sweep by Portland is the kind of result that rearranges how the conference talks about itself.

Two nights, two wins, one conclusion the record now states plainly: the Thunder have lost twice to the Blazers, on back-to-back nights, in the same building. Portland's week keeps rolling with its confidence; Oklahoma City goes home with film of a matchup problem that has a name and a red jersey — Deni Avdija, and the team that would not miss from deep. Follow every play in the Game Center.