INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — For the third straight season, the road to the NBA title goes through Oklahoma City.
And this latest No. 1 seed has put the Thunder in some storied basketball company.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his defending champs became the seventh team in NBA history to finish with its conference’s best regular-season record in at least three consecutive years when Oklahoma City wrapped up the No. 1 overall seed in the upcoming playoffs with a 128-110 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night.
The list of NBA teams who topped their conference standings in at least three straight seasons encompasses most of the greatest groups of the past half-century: The dominant Celtics teams of the 1970s and 1980s, the Showtime Lakers, the storied 1990s Chicago Bulls, the 2000s Lakers and the 2010s Golden State Warriors.
After comfortably holding off the Clippers for their 19th win in 20 games, the defending NBA champion Thunder (64-16) joined that elite group by clinching the top seed over San Antonio (61-19) and the league’s best overall record.
The Thunder said they don’t take this achievement for granted, even as they move on to chase bigger goals over the next two months.
“It feels better for sure, not only because we’ve had to weather a little more (adversity),” said MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 20 points and 11 assists before sitting out the fourth quarter. “But just repeating something and doing it again is always a little bit harder. It’s a little more challenging. The league gets better. Players get better. For us to still have the best overall record through those ups and downs speaks volumes to the team. … We always say at the beginning of the season that no matter what happened, we have to earn what we get to make it to the playoffs and our seeding, and we earned the first overall seed.”
The Thunder have been a powerhouse ever since they broke through two seasons ago to claim the best record in the West with 57 victories. After winning 68 games last year, they’ve become only the third team in NBA history to win at least 64 games in back-to-back seasons, joining the 1995-97 Bulls and the 2015-17 Warriors.
But they all know the playoffs are a stiffer test, and Oklahoma City will attempt to become the first team to win titles after having the NBA’s best record in back-to-back seasons since Michael Jordan’s Bulls did it in 1996 and 1997.
“It’s a great accomplishment,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “No two seasons are the same, and this season was a lot different experience. … When you win the championship, that kind of hangs over you as a team the next year. Everybody — including ourselves — you judge yourself against that. It’s incredibly hard to be present in the next regular season. I learned so much from this team, because their ability to come in every day and just embrace the day and the challenge that we had that day is really impressive, and it’s why I think we had the season that we did.”
Indeed, Oklahoma City began this season with a 24-2 surge that had the basketball world wondering whether this was the best regular-season team in NBA history. Injuries slowed the Thunder to a mere 18-12 from mid-December to the All-Star break — but they’ve regained their ruthless momentum with a 22-2 rampage since then.
The Thunder were at least tied for first place in the conference for every day of the season, becoming only the seventh such wire-to-wire winner in league history. Golden State did it most recently in 2016.
“I thought we did a good job of fighting through everything we saw this year, and it’s paid off,” said Chet Holmgren, who scored 30 points against the Clips.
The injury problems might have prevented the Thunder from chasing the best single-season records in NBA history, but they also might have left Oklahoma City a bit fresher for the playoff challenges ahead: Isaiah Joe and Cason Wallace are the only players to appear in 70 games this season.
The Thunder have two more games before several days off to prepare for another postseason run, and Gilgeous-Alexander thinks they’ll be ready.
“We understand how to win, and the formula for winning,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored at least 20 points in his 141st consecutive game despite not making a free throw for the first time all season. “We understand that everybody doing that is the key to success. It’s not the razzle-dazzle and the stuff that’s cute. Understanding that getting the job done every night, and how to get it done, I think we’ve built that muscle more than anything.”
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