Thunder clinch West's top seed
The Oklahoma City Thunder surged to the NBA’s best overall record and secured the No. 1 seed in the West following a seven-game win streak, marking the franchise’s back-to-back best-record status for the first time since the Bucks went back-to-back in 2019–20. (x.com). Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s consistency is a big part of that run—he extended a streak to 140 consecutive games scoring 20+ points in the club’s latest win—so OKC’s late-season form looks structurally strong heading into playoffs. (x.com)
Oklahoma City just turned the top of the Western Conference into a formality. By beating the Los Angeles Clippers 128-110 on April 8, the Thunder locked up the No. 1 seed in the West and the best record in the entire National Basketball Association at 64-16. (apnews.com) That win was their seventh in a row, and it came with the kind of margin that has defined this season. The Thunder entered April 9 with a league-best plus-12.1 point differential, which means they were not just winning games but separating from teams by about 12 points a night. (espn.com) The seeding part matters because the Western Conference has been crowded all year. Oklahoma City finished ahead of the San Antonio Spurs at 61-19 and the Denver Nuggets at 52-28, so every West playoff series the Thunder play before the Finals will start in Oklahoma City. (espn.com) This is not a one-year spike. The Associated Press reported that Oklahoma City has now secured the No. 1 seed in the West for a third straight season, which puts the franchise in a small group of teams that have stayed at the top instead of peaking once and fading. (apnews.com) The latest clincher also came with another Shai Gilgeous-Alexander milestone. National Basketball Association coverage from the game said he reached 140 straight games with at least 20 points during the win, and the official game summary listed it as his 141st consecutive 20-point game by the end of the night. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) That streak tells you what Oklahoma City’s offense looks like in practice. Gilgeous-Alexander is not giving them random 42-point explosions once a week; he is giving them a 20-point floor almost every night, which lets the rest of the roster play around something stable instead of chasing chaos. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) The clinching game showed the second part of the formula too. Chet Holmgren scored 30 points against the Clippers, so the Thunder did not need one player to drag them over the line on the night they secured home-court advantage through the Western playoffs. (apnews.com) The historical note is unusually clean. The 2025-26 Thunder are the first team since the Milwaukee Bucks in 2018-19 and 2019-20 to finish with the National Basketball Association’s best regular-season record in back-to-back years; Milwaukee went 60-22 and then 56-17 in the pandemic-shortened season. (basketball-reference.com 1) (basketball-reference.com 2) So the story going into the playoffs is not that Oklahoma City got hot at the right time. The story is that a 64-win team with the league’s best record, a seven-game winning streak, and a star scoring streak that has crossed 140 games has made dominance look routine. (espn.com) (nba.com)
