Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (right) collides with Houston Rockets guard Reed Sheppard
The last team standing last season is the last team to remain undefeated this season.
So much for that championship hangover.
Jalen Williams hasn’t played yet, Chet Holmgren is dealing with a balky back, Lu Dort just missed a game because of illness … and the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder are still just rolling along, off to a 7-0 start despite using four different starting lineups in those seven games.
“We have a DNA,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder’s reigning NBA MVP, NBA Finals MVP and scoring champion. “We have an identity. We understand how to play basketball. We understand how to win. Win games, big moments and it’s done with all five guys on the court on both ends and that’s engraved in us. That’s something that is almost a habit now and every night we try to implement that.”
Such was the case last year, when the Thunder went 68-14 and won the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed by 16 games. Put that into some perspective: Oklahoma City could have ended the season on an 18-game losing streak and it still would have won the No. 1 seed at 53-29, or one game better than Houston’s 52-30.
Add the 16 playoff wins from last season and the 7-0 start this season, and Oklahoma City is 94-22 since October 2024. That’s 20 wins or so more than any other team in that span, and all by an average of about 12 points per game.
It is a historic level of dominance, as proven by how last season’s 12.9-point-per-game differential in the regular season smashed the existing NBA record that had stood for more than a half-century. And then after Sunday’s win over New Orleans, Gilgeous-Alexander sounded an alarm that the NBA probably didn’t want to hear.
“It feels like we’re a better team,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It feels like we’ve had a year to get better, honestly.”
The Thunder had the amazing ability last season to impress onlookers and remain unimpressed by their own success. So far, it looks like the same rings true this season.
They’ve trailed by more than 10 points only once; they faced a 12-point deficit in the season opener against Houston, and that was for only 61 seconds. They survived a pair of double-overtime games to start the season — the opener against Houston, then the NBA Finals rematch two nights later against an Indiana team that is very different than the one that played a Game 7 in Oklahoma City for the Larry O’Brien Trophy 4 1/2 months ago.
They have faced a deficit of no more than five points in five of their games, winning two wire-to-wire. They led New Orleans by 36 on Sunday, led Washington by 24 on Oct. 30, led Atlanta by 24 on Oct. 25, led Dallas by 22 on Oct. 27.
“I think it has not been like smooth sailing through the first seven games,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “We’ve played a lot of close games that we’ve had to kind of grind out.”
The next week or so doesn’t figure to be particularly easy for the Thunder. A four-game, six-night road trip starts Tuesday at the Los Angeles Clippers. TIM REYNOLDS, Basketball Writer, MDT/AP
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