Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m pretty mad I couldn’t stay up until the end of the Knicks’ game and missed Mikal Bridges’s game-winner.
In today’s SI:AM:
🎙️ Exclusive Ohtani interview
⚠️ Buyer beware, Rodgers pursuers
⭕ Ohio State’s disappointing finish
History in the making
Every day, the evidence mounts that the Oklahoma City Thunder should be considered the favorites to win this year’s NBA Finals. The latest data point? Wednesday night’s 118–112 road win over the Boston Celtics was the Thunder’s 22nd victory against the Eastern Conference this season. They’re now a staggering 22–1 this season against teams from the East.
According to John Schuhmann of NBA.com, the best record a team has had against the opposite conference is 27–3, a mark reached by three teams: the 1999–2000 Los Angeles Lakers, the ’06–07 Dallas Mavericks and ’15–16 Golden State Warriors. (It is perhaps not a coincidence that the record is shared by three teams from the Western Conference.) The Thunder have seven games left against the East to try to best that record.
The Thunder have predictably beat up on the East’s lesser teams, but they’ve also flexed their muscles against the best teams in the conference. Wednesday’s win was Oklahoma City’s second this season against the defending champions, after a 105–92 win at home over Boston on Jan. 5. MVP favorite Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the way for OKC with 34 points and seven assists. It was the 60th straight game in which Gilgeous-Alexander scored at least 20 points, making him just the seventh player in NBA history to have a streak that long.
Defensively, the Thunder were content to let the Celtics fire away from three-point range. Boston attempted a whopping 63 three-pointers, tying the NBA record for most in a regulation game. Two-thirds of the shots the Celtics attempted were from behind the arc. Their three-point attempt rate of 67.02% was the sixth-highest in NBA history.
Even with the caliber of shooters Boston has, an approach that reliant upon outside shooting is always going to be highly variable. Some nights the shots fall, some nights they don’t. On Wednesday, they didn’t. The Celtics hit just 31.7% of their threes, one of their worst shooting nights of the season. Boston is 6–8 this season when it makes less than 32% of its three-pointers and 41–11 when it makes more than 32%.
If Wednesday’s game was a preview of June’s NBA Finals, we have some idea of how the Thunder would approach that series, locking down the interior on defense to get the Celtics to chuck up threes. It’s a strategy that worked well in two regular-season matchups (the Celtics hit just 26.6% of their threes in those games), but would it work over the course of a seven-game series? Maybe not. The Thunder can’t expect the Celtics to shoot that poorly every night.
But regardless of any particular strategic choices, the Thunder’s dominance against the East this season has reinforced their status as Finals favorites. Getting through the West could be a little tricky, whether that’s a matchup against the great Nikola Jokić and his Denver Nuggets, the new-look Los Angeles Lakers or the Houston Rockets and their great defense. But the East has offered the Thunder little resistance this season. The lone blemish on their 22–1 record against the East is a road loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 8. They also lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Cup championship game on Dec. 17 (the Cup title game doesn’t count in the standings). Crucially, though, star center Chet Holmgren was out injured for both of those games. He returned to the floor on Feb. 7 and the Thunder are 16–4 with him in the lineup.
The NBA record for best winning percentage against the opposite conference is well within reach for OKC, but these next few days will be crucial. The Thunder wrap up their current road trip with games Saturday and Sunday against the Detroit Pistons and the Bucks, followed by home dates next week with the lowly Philadelphia 76ers and Charlotte Hornets. Their final games against the East are at home on March 29 and 31 against the Indiana Pacers and Chicago Bulls, and on April 2 against the Pistons. It’s not a terribly easy schedule (four of the seven games are against current playoff teams), but would you be surprised if they ran the table?
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Shohei Ohtani doesn’t do many one-on-one interviews, but he did speak to Tom Verducci ahead of the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Tokyo.
- Conor Orr cautions the Giants and Steelers that pursuing Aaron Rodgers probably won’t turn out the way they’re hoping it will.
- In his latest mailbag, Albert Breer explains why the 49ers’ roster turnover shouldn’t be cause for panic.
- Ohio State’s first-round loss in the Big Ten tournament likely marks the end of a disappointing season. Kevin Sweeney argues that coach Jake Diebler deserves to shoulder the blame for the Buckeyes falling flat.
- Stephanie Apstein checks in from Red Sox camp, where Alex Bregman is already having an impact on the team’s young players.
- The Rams cut veteran receiver Cooper Kupp after eight seasons with the team.
- Minnesota has fired its men’s basketball coach after the Gophers’ early Big Ten tournament exit.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Thunder Continue to Dominate the East.
