Will they ever lose another game ever again?
Thunder's eighth straight win to begin the season sure makes you wonder
Ten NBA regular seasons ago, the Golden State Warriors won 73 games.
Twenty NBA regular seasons ago, the Chicago Bulls won 72.
Also, the Lakers won 69 in ’71–’72 and the Bulls 69 in ’96–’97 and, if you’ve forgotten, last season’s Thunder won 68, but the point is those first two.
Only two teams have ever won 70, and the way it’s going, would somebody please explain to me, barring injury to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — how the Oklahoma City Thunder might fail to become the third to win 70 or, for that matter, the first to win 74.
I want to know because after knocking off the Los Angeles Clippers 126–107 after midnight Tuesday, I can’t find the losses.
Maybe tonight will be difficult, the second night of a back-to-back in Portland, especially with the Thunder still without All-Star and Finals hero Jalen Williams for a ninth straight game, and good chance Lu Dort sits, too, after missing most of the second half in LA after taking a hard shot to the shoulder.
But I don’t see it.
They’re 8–0 with a bullet and after needing double overtime to win each of the first two, against Houston and Indiana, they’ve taken the last five by an average margin of 19.8 points, scoring 127, 137 and 126 the last three, Tuesday’s 126 despite trailing 33–20 entering their final possession of the first quarter.
How about some numbers?
Gilgeous-Alexander not only finished with 33 points, 12 assists and three blocks, he scored at least 20 for an 80th straight game, eclipsing Oscar Robertson’s run of 79, to trail only Wilt Chamberlain, who did it over 126 straight games once and 92 once, all between opening night ’61 and closing night ’64.
Wilt was something.
After SGA it was Isaiah Joe off the bench, netting 22 on 7-of-12 shooting and 6-of-10 from beyond the arc, then Aaron Wiggins and Cason Wallace with 12, Chet Holmgren with 11 and three blocks and Isaiah Hartenstein with 10, seven rebounds and four steals.
How about this?
SGA finished plus-2 for the game, meaning OKC outscored Los Angeles by just two points over the 29 minutes the reigning MVP spent on the floor.
Strange, right?
But Ajay Mitchell, who failed to score 10 points for the first time all season, finished plus-31 over 20 minutes; Wiggins finished plus-26 over 12; Alex Caruso plus-22 over 24.
Poor Chris Paul, 40 years old and a Clipper again all these years later, finished minus-24 over 11 minutes.
With a little more than half the fourth quarter to play, NBC threw up a bananas graphic in the bottom left corner of the screen.
On the left edge were two time stamps, “1st QTR” and “SINCE.” On the top were three column headings, “FORCED TO,” “POINTS OFF TO” and “FB PTS.”
Here’s what it told us:
In the first quarter, the Thunder forced no turnovers, scored no points off turnovers, and managed only two fast-break points. Yet in the almost two-and-a-half quarters since, they’d forced 18 turnovers, scored 31 points off them and added 23 fast-break points.
Like they’re inevitable.
Rather than the Thunder, maybe they should be called “the Volcano” or “the Lava” because what they do is erupt.
OKC outscored Los Angeles 70–50 after the half and, get this, from the 7:04 mark of the third quarter to the 6:04 mark of the fourth, a 13-minute span, the Thunder outscored the Clippers 52–22, scoring two or three points on 21 of 26 possessions.
They did it defensively.
They did it offensively.
They got contributions from everybody, everywhere.
Terry Gannon, on the national broadcast, after SGA hit a 3 right after assisting Joe on a 3, yelled, “What can you say?”
After a Hartenstein steal, he added, “They’re not all interchangeable parts, but they are mindset-wise.”
That’s what happens when ownership, general management, coaching and the league’s best player stay on the same page.
Yet another time, Gannon, unless it was color man Reggie Miller, noted that even as the Thunder were the second-youngest team ever to win an NBA championship last season, they are nonetheless the oldest team head coach Mark Daigneault has ever skippered.
Crazy.
So they should only get better, not only when Jalen Williams’ wrist finally heals, but throughout the season as reps accumulate, time passes ad maturity rises.
Will they ever lose
Eventually, they must.
It’s hard to imagine how.