by OKLAHOMA CITY – After traveling over 6,000 miles in the last nine days, the Oklahoma City Blue returned home for Game 2 of the NBA G League Finals and claimed a 99-89 win over the Maine Celtics to send the best-of-three series back to Portland.
Drew Peterson posted 29 points and seven rebounds to lead Maine. Jordan Walsh and Joe Wieskamp added 13 points apiece and JD Davison tallied 11 points, five rebounds and 12 assists.
Lindy Waters III led Oklahoma City with 27 points, seven rebounds and five assists, shooting 10-13 from the field and 5-7 from downtown. Ousmane Dieng turned in 12 points and seven rebounds and Jahmi’us Ramsey also had 12 points. KJ Williams put up 13 points and seven rebounds off the bench. Olivier Sarr and Hunter Maldonado each scored 10 points.
Sarr splashed a corner three for the game’s opening bucket, and Waters hit a runner to put Oklahoma City up by a handful early. The Celtics went scoreless for over 3.5 minutes to start the night before Peterson banked in a floater to break the ice, the first of three-straight scoring possessions that pulled Maine back within two, 9-7, by the first timeout. The pace slowed down as the first developed despite a few turnovers from Maine, as both sides sat below 40% from the field for much of the frame. Waters carried the Blue offense in the early-going, scoring 10 of their first 17 points on 4-5 shooting. After Maine limited Oklahoma City to 14 points in the first quarter of Game 1, the Blue held them to 14 in the first quarter of Game 2, taking a 25-14 lead into the second.
The Blue kicked off the second quarter with an 8-2 run, capped off by a Maldonado layup that stretched their lead to 17 points, 33-16. Maine put together its first sustained stretch of two-way basketball as they fired back with an 11-4 run to pull within 10, 37-27, getting within single digits on a three from Walsh soon after. A 12-footer from Tony Snell later trimmed Maine’s deficit to seven, but a 5-0 solo run from Sarr and a deep trey with 31 seconds left in the half from Waters pushed Oklahoma City’s lead back to a dozen. Peterson drilled a high-arcing three just before the clock expired, making it a nine-point game at the half with the Celtics trailing 55-46.
Oklahoma City came out of the locker room on a 9-4 run; Waters hit his fourth three in five tries to get himself to 20 points early in the third, providing a huge spark on assignment after missing Game 1. Turning defense into offense helped Maine steadily chip away at the deficit, clawing within six on an and-one from Wieskamp. Walsh’s relentless two-way effort helped the Celtics make it a four-point game, 64-60, but an 8-2 Oklahoma City run midway through the frame rebuilt their lead to double digits in short order. The run extended to 19-9 through the remainder of the quarter as the Blue led by 14 points after three, 83-69.
Amid another dry patch, Maine went down by as many as 18 as it took them over three minutes to get a bucket in the final frame. Back-to-back threes from Peterson and Wieskamp woke up the Celtics offense and made it a 10-point game once again, 87-77 with just over seven minutes to play. Jaden Shackelford responded with a timely triple and the Blue went up by as many as 15 points, but the Celtics weren’t done yet.
Walsh nailed a corner triple at the three minute and 19 second-mark, Peterson earned a 1-for-3 and then Wieskamp buried a three off the catch to make it a six-point game with less than two minutes remaining. In the end, Oklahoma City did just enough to hold off a Celtics comeback and send the series back to Portland for a winner-take-all Game 3.
