For most teams, the win the Oklahoma City Thunder earned over the New York Knicks on Friday would be the signature victory over their season. Without star center Chet Holmgren and key defender Alex Caruso, the Thunder held the Knicks, the NBA’s No. 3 offense, to just 41 second-half points to overcome a 14-point deficit and win 117-107. Again, to a normal team, this would be a season-defining victory, the sort players and coaches talk about in the playoffs as a turning point to their season. For the Thunder, though? It was apparently just an appetizer.
On Sunday, they ordered the main course and took a step up the offensive leaderboard by facing the No. 2-ranked Boston Celtics, who also happen to be the defending NBA champions. Just like the Knicks, the Celtics held a double-digit lead, theirs by 13 points, and just like the Knicks, they played the game with a healthy starting lineup while the Thunder were still without Holmgren and Caruso. But yet again, the Thunder overcame the deficit, and this time, they did so in even more convincing fashion. The big, bad Celtics, who had the most efficient offense in NBA history a season ago en route to a historically dominant 64-win season, scored only 27 total points in the second half as the Thunder stormed back for the victory.
The game featured all of the typical Thunder flourishes. They forced 16 turnovers on a Celtics team that turns the ball over less than any team besides the Thunder themselves. Mark Daigneault swung the game with a key second-half adjustment, putting Lu Dort on Jaylen Brown, who scored 21 points in the first half and none in the second. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added to his burgeoning MVP case with 33 points, 11 rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocks. They even had a standout reserve outshine the entire opposing bench: Aaron Wiggins scored 15 points, outdoing Boston’s bench total of 13 on his own. It’s the second straight game in which he’s done so, as he also lapped New York’s bench on Friday.
The victory was Oklahoma City’s 15th straight, assuming you don’t count the NBA Cup final against the Milwaukee Bucks as the league does not, an appropriate number based on what’s coming next. The Thunder took out the No. 3 offense in the NBA on Friday. They beat No. 2 on Sunday. On Wednesday, they face the No. 1 offense and overall team in the NBA by record, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Before Sunday’s Thunder win, the Cavaliers owned the longest winning streak of this season at 15. Now the two are tied.
But given how well both have played this season, Wednesday’s showdown holds far greater meaning in terms of the standings themselves. Cleveland is 30-4 as of this writing, giving the Cavaliers a half-game lead over the 30-5 Thunder for the best record in the NBA. Whoever wins on Wednesday takes an important step towards home-court advantage in a possible NBA Finals matchup, and while the Cavaliers may not be riding quite as long a streak as the Thunder, one could argue the one they are currently on is just as impressive. Cleveland has nine straight victories as of this writing, but all nine of them have come by double digits. The Thunder have four single-digit wins on this streak, which is hardly a mark against them, but it goes to show just how well Cleveland has played during this Thunder run.
By all indications, these are not only two championship-caliber teams, but two historically dominant regular-season outfits. Last year’s Celtics had the fourth-best net rating in league history at the time at plus-11.6. According to StatMuse, both the Cavaliers (plus-11.8) and Thunder (plus-12.1) are ahead of them at this moment. Friday was a possible Finals preview. Sunday, according to Vegas, was the likeliest. But Wednesday will give us our first glimpse at how the two best statistical teams of the 2024-25 season thus far match up head to head. If they keep playing as well as they are right now, there is a reasonable chance we see them duke it out again in June.
