Nurkic's historic performance not enough for Suns against Thunder

It had been more than 13 years since anyone grabbed 31 boards in an NBA game before Nurkic did it in Phoenix's 118-110 loss to the Thunder. He and his teammates came out hot, taking a 13-point lead midway through the first quarter, thanks to Nurkic dominating the glass. At one point, Nurkic had 11 rebounds while the whole Thunder team had only four points.

But while Nurkic showed he can get a lot of rebounds, the Thunder showed that they could rebound from adversity. OKC went on a 29-7 run to take their own big lead, eventually going up by 24 in the third quarter.

Phoenix rallied to take their own six-point lead in the fourth, but the plucky Thunder rebounded from despair once again, rallying to take control of the game in the fourth quarter. They even survived Nurkic scoring with putbacks on his 29th and 30th rebounds of the game.

The undersized Thunder aren't a good rebounding team at all, ranked 27th in the NBA this season. But they make up for it by forcing the most turnovers in the NBA, with 15.7 per game.  On Sunday, they forced 21 Phoenix giveaways, including five from Nurkic and seven from Bradley Beal.

That's how the Thunder got 11 more shot attempts than the Suns, despite Nurkic grabbing more offensive rebounds than their entire team.

It was a truly historic performance from Nurkic, and only the fifth time an NBA player has grabbed at least 30 rebounds since 1997. But he'd agree that the game would have been a lot more memorable for him if he'd managed to snag a win.