Thunder clinch No. 1

Oklahoma City spent most of the season looking like a team playing on fast-forward, and on April 8 it turned that into the Western Conference’s top seed and the National Basketball Association’s best overall record. The standings now show the Thunder at 64 wins and 16 losses, three games ahead of San Antonio with two games left for each team. (espn.com) That seven-game winning streak is the last push, not the whole story. Oklahoma City is also 9-1 in its last 10 games and owns a +12.1 average point differential, which means it has not just been winning but beating teams by about 12 points a night. (espn.com) The clinch matters because the West has not been a one-team conference this year. San Antonio is 61-19, Denver is 52-28, and the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets are both 50-29, so Oklahoma City finished first in a field where four other teams are already at or near 50 wins. (espn.com) The National Basketball Association had already laid out the math before Wednesday’s games: Oklahoma City would lock up the No. 1 seed in the West and best record in the league with a win or a San Antonio loss. By the end of April 8, the bracket had the Thunder fixed in the top spot, waiting for a play-in winner. (nba.com) That changes the road through the postseason. The SoFi National Basketball Association Play-In Tournament runs April 14 through April 17, and the playoffs start April 18, so Oklahoma City now gets the conference’s lowest surviving seed instead of opening against a proven top-six team. (nba.com) Finishing with the league’s best record also gives the Thunder home-court advantage in every series, including the National Basketball Association Finals if they get there. Their home record is 34-6, which is the kind of split that turns one extra game in Oklahoma City into a real edge. (espn.com) What makes this less fluky is how complete the profile looks. Oklahoma City scores 119.4 points per game, allows 107.3, and went 41-9 against Western Conference opponents, so this is a team that has been elite on both ends and against the exact teams it will have to beat in May. (espn.com) The bracket around them is still unsettled even though their spot is not. Phoenix and the Los Angeles Clippers are lined up in the 7-versus-8 play-in game, while Portland and Golden State sit in the 9-versus-10 game, and one of those four teams will become Oklahoma City’s first-round opponent. (nba.com) So the headline is simple, but the position is bigger than one night: 64-16, seven straight wins, the West’s top seed, and the league’s best record going into the final weekend of the regular season. Everything in the Western Conference now starts with a trip to Oklahoma City. (espn.com)