Russell Westbrook won’t have to sit out of Monday’s game after all.

The Thunder star seemed certain to be spending Monday’s vital game in Oklahoma City against the Trail Blazers watching from the bench after picking up his 16th technical – which merits an automatic one-game suspension – in the fourth quarter of a loss to the Pacers in Indianapolis on Sunday night.

But NBA President of Basketball Operations Rod Thorn chose to rescind the technical Monday – allowing Westbrook to play – after discussing it with Ed Malloy, the referee who made the call, and others inside the league office.

“Our feeling, after looking at it and talking with the referees was that for a 16th technical, this wasn’t one that we felt was justified,” Thorn said.

Thorn said the fact that Oklahoma City entered Monday’s action tied with New Orleans for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference with two games to go “didn’t have anything to do with” the decision to rescind Westbrook’s technical foul, which became the 36th one to be rescinded by the NBA this season. New Orleans holds the tiebreaker over the Thunder because of a 2-1 edge in the season series between the two teams.

“Our feeling in looking at it was it didn’t warrant a technical foul,” Thorn said. “We’ve rescinded 36 of them, counting this one, this year, so it’s not like it’s something we do every now and then. We do rescind them.”

Thorn said the league looks at every technical foul in order to see if they think it needs to be rescinded, and they decide what to do after discussing it with the referees involved and with people inside the league office.

“Some are obvious,” Thorn said when asked how it is determined which ones are to be rescinded and which aren’t. “Some are obvious, and you try to look at them. The people in my department, most all have played, and so we look at them and talk about them and go from there.

“Sometimes the referee will call a technical, and sometimes they’ll send in, ‘Please rescind this,’ because it was to try to keep the game under control or after thinking about it, I don’t think this was a technical.”

Thorn said he did discuss the call with Malloy, but didn’t say whether Malloy had asked him to rescind the technical in this case.

“I had a conversation with him,” Thorn said. “We just looked at it, and tried to look at it like anything else.”

Westbrook finished Sunday’s loss to the Pacers with career-highs of 54 shots on 43 shots to go along with nine rebounds and eight assists.