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Oklahoma City Thunder and the Detroit Pistons both moved 2-0 up in their NBA Conference semi-finals with home victories over the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers respectively.
Defending champions Thunder beat the Lakers 125-107 in their Western Conference tie, with Chet Holmgren and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander each scoring 22 points.
LeBron James added 23 points for the Lakers but his side let slip a five-point lead to trail by 13 at the end of a pivotal third quarter.
Gilgeous-Alexander, the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player, was limited to 28 minutes on the court because of a series of fouls.
“I’ve got the utmost confidence in our whole team,” said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault when asked about playing without his star man.
“We’ve shown that during the year. We’ve tried to train that muscle and we’ve got guys that are competitors. They see the challenges of the game as opportunities and they attack them.”
Cade Cunningham starred for the Pistons in their 107-97 Eastern Conference win against the Cavaliers, scoring 25 points – including 12 in the fourth quarter – and contributing 10 assists.
“Cade is just fabulous,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “He’s the killer, the closer, all the adjectives you want to talk about. He’s it. In the fourth quarter, he does his best work.”
Tobias Harris added 21 points for the Pistons, his seventh consecutive score of 20 or more points in the play-offs, having not reached that mark in back-to-back games in the regular season.
Both winning teams – who are the respective top seeds in their conferences – go on the road for Saturday’s fixtures in the best-of-seven semi-finals, with Thunder looking to extend their unbeaten run in this season’s play-offs.
