OKC locks No. 1

Oklahoma City finished the hard part early: by April 8, the Thunder had locked up the top seed in the Western Conference and the best overall record in the National Basketball Association after beating the Los Angeles Clippers 128-110 to move to 64-16. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) That changes the shape of the West immediately, because the top line of the bracket is now fixed: Oklahoma City will open against the team that survives the play-in tournament for the No. 8 spot. The National Basketball Association’s updated bracket listed that matchup after games played on April 8. (nba.com) It also means the last four days of the regular season are no longer about whether Oklahoma City can catch anyone. They are about who lands second through eighth, with San Antonio, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, Minnesota and the play-in field still sorting themselves out. (cbssports.com) (nba.com) The reward for finishing first is simple and huge: Oklahoma City gets home-court advantage in every Western Conference series. If the Thunder reach the National Basketball Association Finals, the league says they would also have home court there because the April 8 clinch included the best overall record in the league. (nba.com) That matters because Oklahoma City has been dominant in its own building, going 34-6 at home through 80 games. A playoff series is not decided by one arena, but starting with four possible home games instead of three is the kind of edge teams spend six months chasing. (cbssports.com) The Thunder did not back into this spot. They got there with a seven-game winning streak, a plus-12.1 point differential, and the league’s stingiest defense by points allowed among the top West teams listed in the standings snapshot. (nba.com) (cbssports.com) The face of that season has been Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was averaging 31.1 points and 6.6 assists, while Chet Holmgren led the club with 8.9 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game on the team stats page. Oklahoma City is not a one-star team, but those numbers show why opponents spend entire game plans trying to bend the floor around those two. (espn.com) There is also a bigger backdrop here: Oklahoma City won the 2025 National Basketball Association title last June, beating Indiana in seven games for the franchise’s first championship in Oklahoma City. So this clinch is not a young team arriving out of nowhere; it is the defending champion coming back with an even cleaner regular-season résumé. (cbssports.com) Now the Thunder get the luxury every contender wants in April: they can think about rest, health and matchups while everyone below them keeps scrambling. The bracket spot is settled, the building will be full for Game 1, and the next meaningful question is which exhausted team has to walk into Oklahoma City first. (cbssports.com) (nba.com)