Thunder match Warriors’ 24-1 start, and it’s hard to imagine them not breaking their 73-win record

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The Oklahoma City Thunder and pre-Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors share a number of similarities.

• The superstar point guard who won his first MVP, and first title, two years after his first All-Star selection.
• The shooting-guard wingman who became the second All-Star (Klay Thompson and Jalen Williams).
• The dominant defense built on like-sized switchers and the pressure they provide.
• The hidden gem in Draymond Green (drafted in second round) and Lu Dort (undrafted).
• The defensive-ace acquisition (Andre Iguodala and Alex Caruso).
• The first-time head coach.

Those Warriors felt the cynicism surrounding their first championship. They heard the critics pointing to the opponent injury luck they’d enjoyed along their postseason path. Nobody called it outright luck. But to say that team was universally accepted as the best in the league would be a lie. 

People pointed to the 2-1 hole in which those Warriors found themselves against Memphis in the second round, and the fact that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love combined to play one game in the Finals, as evidence that they weren’t actually as dominant as they’d been made out to be. The Warriors heard it all, and used it as fuel to bombard the league the following season to the tune of a 24-1 start en route to an NBA-record 73 wins in the 2015-16 season.

It’s the same deal for these Thunder, who had their dominance questioned after needing seven games to squeak past the Nuggets in the second round before being on the right side of Tyrese Haliburton’s blown Achilles in Game 7 of the Finals. Were the Thunder actually the best team? 

Yes, they were. And like those Warriors, they have used the stage of this season to drive that point home. No championship hangover. No mercy. Their most victim was the Suns, who took a 49-point thrashing (Phoenix’s most-lopsided loss in team history) in the NBA Cup quarterfinals Wednesday night, which ran OKC’s record to …24-1. 

These Thunder have virtually mirrored those Warriors at every turn, and it begs the question: Is Golden State’s 73-win record in jeopardy? Yes, it is. 

Personally, I’d go so far as to say I’ll be surprised if the Thunder don’t break the record. The odds don’t agree. Caesars currently has the over 73.5 wins mark for these Thunder at +325, and the under at -500, which makes sense as we’re talking about a win total that has never been reached. Things happen. Players get hurt. Schedule losses show up. 

I get all that, and I’m still saying I’ll be surprised if Oklahoma City doesn’t win 74 games. This is a team that entered Wednesday demolishing its opponents by 15.9 points per 100 possessions, which would shatter the current NBA record. And that was before they beat Phoenix by 49. 

Injuries are the obvious X-factor, but ask yourself who’s going to get hurt that’s going to upend Oklahoma City’s attack? Jalen Williams is the second-best player on the team, and they started the season 18-1 with him in street clothes. Even the one loss never should’ve happened as it required the Thunder blowing a 22-point lead to the Blazers. 

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the MVP of the league for crying out loud, and on paper the Thunder don’t even need him to bury you alive. Seriously, the Thunder are carving opponents up by 16.2 points per 100 possessions when SGA’s not on the floor, per CTG, which is a number no logical mind can wrap itself around. 

Speaking of insane numbers, the Thunder have now outscored their opponents by 439 points this season. That’s the highest point differential in history through 25 games by an almost laughable margin. 

Last season the Thunder outscored opponents by 12.9 points per 100 possessions, which was the best net rating in history. This season they are annihilating their own record with an utterly absurd +17.5 through 25 games. 

As noted in Michael Pina’s recent piece for The Ringer, Oklahoma City entered play on Wednesday having played 18% of its minutes this season with at least a 20-point lead. On Wednesday the Thunder had their first 20-point lead less than a minute into the second quarter and they played the entire second half leading by at least 26. 

So often are the Thunder blowing the doors off their opponents that Gilgeous-Alexander has only had to play the fourth quarter in 12 of his 24 games so far, and yet he still leads the league in total clutch points. 

There’s no hole to potentially exploit here. No single player, not even SGA, dominates the ball, so OKC isn’t susceptible to its superstar having an off night, if he ever plans on actually having one of those. He’s scored at least 30 points in 19 of his 24 games this year, and dating back to last regular season SGA has scored at least 20 points in 97 straight games. 

The guy is averaging nearly a point per minute. That’s Wilt territory (and Giannis, who’s actually averaging 0.99 points per minute this season, per NBA.com). 

To have arguably the best offensive player in the world paired with the best defense in history is like putting prime Aaron Rodgers on the 2000 Ravens. That’s what we’re talking about with the Thunder, who have so many “next guys up” than it literally doesn’t matter who goes down. 

At the very least, even if everyone goes cold on the same night, the defense — which is currently operating at a rating some 12 points above the league average, by far the largest gap in league history, per PBP Stats — is on every night. To call this defense a machine, even a monster, is an understatement. Words don’t exist for this kind of pressure. 

And by the way, that idea I floated about the whole offense going cold on the same night is basically just a theory posited for the sake of argument. It’s not going to happen. OKC ranks third in field-goal percentage. Fifth in 3-point percentage. They create more turnovers than any defense in the league but basically never cough it up themselves (only the Celtics have a lower offensive turnover rate). 

Look back at those early Warriors teams. You could at least have the hope of catching them on a sloppy turnover night, or perhaps you could beat them with size. It almost never happened because they would shoot their way out of every mistake. but this Thunder team? They hardly make mistakes in the first place. 

Think about how many things have to go wrong for them to lose even one game. For starters, the opponent has to play brilliantly. Then, on top of that, the Thunder have to shoot poorly, which they almost never do, or have SGA put up an average night, which he never does and which also doesn’t even matter because they murder you even when he isn’t playing at all, or have the defense play poorly (hilarious), or have about five players hurt at the same time because two or three doesn’t even dent their depth. 

And that’s just to lose one game. The Thunder can lose eight in total, seven more, and still break Golden State’s 73-win record. Now ask yourself, how likely is it that all this stuff happens seven more times? 

No, you can’t account for the unforeseeable. A ball bouncing the wrong way. A back-to-back letdown. A big blown lead. It’s going to happen. It already did once against the Blazers. But that was like lightning striking, and lightning doesn’t strike seven times. I think this record is going down. 

This news was originally published on this post .

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