The Oklahoma City Thunder have had ample off-time recently. Since the end of the regular season, they’ve played two playoff games in nearly two weeks.
Being the first seed granted the Thunder additional rest and it has paid dividends in their two playoff wins over the New Orleans Pelicans. But as the series switches over to Louisana, the downtime between games is shortened.
From Game 3 until the end of the series, the Thunder and Pelicans will play on an every-other-day basis — very similar to the standard regular-season structure.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault talked about the sudden switch in rest as OKC tries to win its first playoff series since 2016.
“We’re not used to playing this few games in this amount of time. The every other day gets us back to a regular season rhythm,” Daigneault said. “Any advantage or disadvantage exists for both teams.”
If the Thunder show out as the top seed and sweep the Pelicans, they’ll have an extra cushion of rest as the Dallas Mavericks and LA Clippers battle it out to advance to the second round.
This could be advantageous for the Thunder as they’ll enter the start of that series with presumed fresher legs against whoever moves on. This should boost their odds in the series and hopes of a Western Conference Finals trip.
These are the benefits the Thunder earned during the grueling 82-game season as they landed the first seed on the last day of the campaign.
Deep playoff runs usually require a bit of luck and that’s been the case thus far for OKC with its schedule.
