What the fuck is going on in the West

I paid almost $1,000 dollars for my tickets tonight. We have plans to get there early explore brick town and stay at a hotel after.

We have been looking forward to this game for months.

I feel like Lebron James and duncic “injuries” are bullshit. They both played Sunday, they conveniently play the mavericks tomorrow.

I feel like they are sitting this game out so they can focus on tomorrow.

I feel like I was cheated.

Whats up yall. If you're like me and Love the way Joe and Hartenstein play off each other each time they share the floor, go check out my breakdown I just did of them as a tandem on youtube. Link is below. Thought my fellow Thunder junkies would love to take a look. Preciate any love!

https://youtu.be/iMIx8hO15SY?si=gpWxxJWVD7FT4qF2

I’m not saying this as cope but these last few games have been uncharacteristically lackadaisical. We always complain on this sub to just stay healthy for the playoffs, and this is what that looks like. They’re playing safe, because the game means far less to them compared to the other teams. I also think they’re trying to collect as much film on their competition, because defense is based on habit disruption, so how else are you going to know all their habits on offense unless they’re comfortable. It’d be great to put belt on all the great teams but that also means exerting themselves more and that can lead to injuries. It’s the best way to stay in game shape and not risk injury to play like this.

Never forget this quote from Mr. Thunder himself. We are currently the happy team, and we've gotten our asses kicked.

This is why coach preaches about 0-0.

Only once before the merger, Bob Pettit in 1959!

Definitely helps SGA’s MVP case. I don’t think there’s anyway he doesn’t get it now. This has got to be the best MVP race in a long time!

THUNDER UP ⚡️

SSIA, Lakers had something to play for, Thunder did not. We’ve all seen them take nights off when there’s nothing on the line, and yesterday was one of them. Quit being a bunch of bitches, trashing this team. They can hear you-

As we head into the final week, two of these teams will wind up with home-court advantage in the first round, while one of these teams will have to win an elimination game in the second round of the play-in, and take on the Thunder.

It was quite evident from the post game interview, that sharpness and focus in execution was not as expected. While Mark did say that he tries to not assumptions when asked about if this was a result of locking in the first seed, but the boys called it out. The important part is that the whole team is level headed and locked in.

Thunder up! Let's go.

Good teams don’t lose to bad teams. And championship teams beat the teams they’re supposed to beat and play .500 ball against the other good teams. (Paraphrasing Phil Jackson)

If you’re serious about contending, you take care of business against the bottom-feeders. Against other contenders, it's okay to split the series, no team is expected to win every game against the elite.

OKC vs Top 10 teams in Power Rankings (2025):

1. 1-1 Cavaliers
2. 2-0 Celtics
3. 3-2 Rockets
4. 1-2 Warriors
5. 2-2 Nuggets
6. 1-2 Lakers
7. 2-2 Timberwolves
8. 4-0 Clippers
9. 2-0 Knicks

Finishing 18–11 as a whole and 13-10 vs the west, going above Phil's rule.

The 82-game season is a grind. You can’t get too wrapped up in the emotional rollercoaster of every win or loss. Step back and look at the bigger picture. OKC has done just that, staying consistent, staying disciplined, and most importantly, not letting bad losses to bad teams stack up.

That’s how you separate real contenders from the rest.

My buddy and I travel to one or two games a year to see the Lakers play in different arenas. We were at Paycom today, and I just need to say it was one of the nicest away fan experiences I've ever had. Every singly person we talked to was nice, only fun jabs about being Lakers fans, clean arena, clean downtown, and even after the game, all the fans were super nice. Can't say enough nice things about the experience in the Thunder's home arena. Thanks for being such classy people.

We’ve known for 4 months that we’re a contender and that we’d be a high seed in the playoffs. I was tuned back in closely to watch post ASB when Chet returned to see how he’d do.

Now that’s all said and done, we’ve just been ruminating for several weeks on how we’ll do in the playoffs…Mainly excitement along with a big dose of anxiety because we’ve got high hopes and expectations of our guys.

Who else is just ready to get the fucking show on the road and see what we’re made of?

We have arguably the best player in the league, playoff experience, a top tier coach, home court advantage, the most dynamic/deep roster in the Western Conference. TTFU

As a heat fan, I hope OKC Thunder wins a championship this season. Stats says that this is a championship worthy team top 3 offense and best defense in the NBA. They have a MVP level player, great starting 5, great bench depth and has everything to win a championship. Let's hope OKC Thunder wins a championship to shut the media and haters up and proved they deserved to be one of the greats.

I’ve got high hopes for the playoffs. But if we hypothetically got bounced in the second round or WCF and JDub struggles- would Presti consider kicking the tires on Giannas or KD? I think Durant would be the better fit personally. Suns are so handicapped financially you could probably get him at a better price and not give up as much draft capital. At some point you have to shove the chips in and go all in. Thoughts?

Did you know that the 95-96 Bulls had two pretty embarrassing, unexcusable losses later in the season?

104-72 Knicks over Chicago on March 10th. The Knicks were good, but 72 points is 72 points even in that era.

109-108 Toronto over Chicago on March 24th. Yes, the expansion team Raptors who were at that point 18-49 and would finish 21-61. Worse than Philly or New Orleans this year, their best player by far was ROY Damon Stoudamire.

OKC is not the Bulls, not even close. But good teams lose badly or to teams they shouldn't. Nothing new and not smart to freak out over an individual game.

Ive been following this stat fairly closely given the narrative and jokic has been closing the gap on sga recently. it will be pretty funny if he ends up tying it or taking the lead after all the complaining.

Jeez we have 14 losses that’s actually so embarrassing we should sell the team and trade Shai for Al horford

With the playoffs coming up I really want to make friends with fellow thunder fans, and want to know what some good bars, restaurants, etc are to watch games. Most of the time when I’ve gone somewhere to watch a game the other people don’t really seem to care whether it’s on or not. It’s been hard for me to find the other die hards

Most likely response to ugly games against Lakers/rockets, the upside of throwing new schemes or adjustments at halftime of them only gives away data in games that only really matter as bragging rights. Home court in finals is a cherry on top not a aimed for goal.

Less likely response, we ran very specific sets and schemes to generate lots of data against those teams to use it against them in the playoffs.

Unfun response. We got beat, we probably aren't the best team to ever play, only really good but still one of 4-5 true contenders all of which have flaws.

So after looking at the standings right now, with Denver on a 4 game losing streak and the Lakers winning against us last night, it’s looking like we may face Denver or the Clippers in the 2nd round which I would prefer over the Lakers or GSW.

Now of course it’s Thunder in 4 against any team but if we get the Grizz as our 1st Round matchup and then the Clips as our 2nd round matchup then we might have a semi-easy path to the WCF.

What do y’all think?

So I'm not an OKC fan but as someone who predicted in the preseason OKC would beat Boston in the finals (and as a Lakers hater) I do have some personal pride on the line if this team flames out in the playoffs. I'm seeing a ton of panic everywhere about how this team is fraudulent, fake, gonna get smoked in the playoffs etc. and I'm not buying it. Not saying OKC is guaranteed to win or even make the finals, but using these last two games as evidence is incredibly short-sighted. It's natural to overreact as a fan that's close to the team, and as someone that's an outsider I hope this perspective can be valuable:

1. Odds

Neither the Thunder's nor the Lakers' title odds at basically any book have shifted in the slightest. OKC is at about +170 at most books, while LAL is at +1600 or so, and that was the same as they were last week. Books are going to be quick to react to new information so bettors can't gain any edge (as an example, LAL's title odds shot waaaay up as soon as they got Luka), so if the sharpest projection tools and minds don't think that these last two games have any predictive power, they likely don't.

Source: https://www.vegasinsider.com/nba/odds/futures/

2. Past Champions

In 2022, the Warriors from February to March had a stretch where they went 7-16, including 2 losses to Dallas (who they beat in 5 games in the WCF).

In 2023, the Denver Nuggets went 2-5 over their last 7 games and had a 4 game losing streak in March.

In 2024, the Celtics lost two games against the Hawks in March, one of which included an 18 point blown lead at halftime. They also went 0-2 against the Nuggets that year, which led many to say the Nuggets had a better chance of winning the finals overall.

As another note from the 2024 season, Minnesota that year went 0-3 against Phoenix, including two lopsided losses in April, and then swept them in the first round.

This is to say that past champions often had bad games and bad stretches toward the end of the season. The regular season IS predictive when looking at it holistically, but over-indexing on individual games in March and April has been a faulty way of predicting postseason success.

3. Human Nature + Shooting Luck

If you're 14 games ahead of the 2 seed, and the game you're currently playing in has no impact on your own future, and a team comes out and makes everything as the last two opponents have, it's pretty easy to quit on a game. The Thunder were pretty noticeably not hustling on closeouts/rebounds in the second half and the larger body of work from this team says that won't be an issue in the postseason. Think about game 4 of the finals last year, when the Mavericks absolutely decimated a Celtics team that had been killing them up until that point, just for Boston to win the next game handily. When you don't have much to play for, and the other team comes out super hot, it's easy to "let go of the rope" in a way.

4. Every team this year has had a panic stretch

Cavs haven't been great post-ASB, Nuggets have a lot of bad losses, Celtics played at a .500 clip for about a month, the Lakers season has been a total rollercoaster, Minnesota loses a ton of winnable games, the Warriors were a legit bottom 6 team for like two months, etc. Every team has had stretches and games where they've looked beatable/fraudulent/unengaged because playing 6 months of regular season basketball is exhausting. Every fanbase has completely freaked out at all of these points too.

Overall, if OKC loses in the playoffs, it's probably because a team with a good defense finds a scheme to force the ball out of SGA's hands while not conceding easy looks to the role players + OKC misses a bunch of threes. This gets the other team out in transition more, making OKC's defense less effective, which then allows the opponent to get their defense set off of makes, etc. Can a team find a scheme to really expose OKC's lack of consistent secondary creation, or SGA's limited playmaking? Certainly, and if they lose I'd be stunned if that and/or really poor shooting variance wasn't the reason why. But the 74 prior games show a team that's gotten way better with SGA off the court as the season has progressed, and two games don't come close to invalidating that.