MIAMI (AP) \u2014 The Oklahoma City Thunder should have been angry.<\/p>\n
It was Saturday night. They had just lost to the Miami Heat 122-120. It was a game that saw Shai Gilgeous-Alexander get called for a crucial offensive foul with 1:14 remaining (the NBA said a day later it wasn’t a foul), the Thunder waste a 12-point lead and referees missing a backcourt violation on Heat guard Norman Powell in the final seconds.<\/p>\n
Their postgame reaction \u2014 the outward one, anyway \u2014 could be summed up thusly: Well, darn.<\/p>\n
The defending NBA champions are winning far more often than they lose; a victory in Cleveland on Monday pushed Oklahoma City’s record to 36-8, the best in the league by a wide margin. The Thunder don’t get too riled up after wins, they don’t get too flustered after losses. They know what matters the most is what’s coming in April, May and June, and if they can find lessons along the way to sharpen their toolkits, that’s what matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing through the playoff runs, we\u2019ve been on the scene now for a little bit of time, enough time to be exposed to it and I think the guys have kind of learned the nature of that through the playoffs, really,” coach Mark Daigneault said. “It\u2019s a series, you win the game, and everybody on the outside is going to talk about how it was a foregone conclusion that you won and that you\u2019re going to run away with the series. And then the minute you lose a game, it\u2019s the opposite. I think when you\u2019re exposed to that enough, you learn not to trust it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Thunder started the season 24-1, then dropped four of their next six and six of their next 12. For a couple of weeks \u2014 gasp! \u2014 they looked vulnerable. They lost to San Antonio three times, including in the NBA Cup semifinals. Talk of \u201cthe Thunder could break the NBA wins record\u201d became talk of \u201cwhat’s wrong with the Thunder\u201d almost overnight.<\/p>\n
They’re 6-1 since, the one loss in Miami by exactly two points.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have those \u2018problems…\u2019” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, clearly breaking out the sarcasm about OKC’s perceived slump. “Yeah, I think the biggest compliment you can give them \u2014 and the thing that just stuns me \u2014 is how they can sustain that kind of success and have that kind of success with a young roster. Usually, there\u2019s some kind of agenda with young players. And that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only agenda seems to be winning.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are outscoring teams by 13.5 points per game this season, which is ahead of their NBA-record pace of 12.9 per game set last season. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander \u2014 an All-Star starter, again \u2014 is the runaway favorite to repeat as the league’s MVP; sure, part of that is given the expectation that Denver’s Nikola Jokic may fall short of the league’s minimum-games requirement to be eligible for such awards, but Gilgeous-Alexander’s averages of nearly 32 points and just over six assists per game are certainly MVP-discussion worthy. They’re an NBA-best 20-2 at home and an NBA-best 16-5 on the road (the NBA Cup game was neutral site).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trust our process,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cWe trust our development.\u201d<\/p>\n
It worked for them last year. Even with a \u201cslump\u201d this year, it’s working for them again. They’ve managed to be unfazed by the noise, whether it’s good or bad. They’re boring in that sense, in the best possible way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that you don\u2019t hear it. We don\u2019t block it out. We can\u2019t block it out,” Daigneault said when asked about expectations. “It\u2019s the nature of the questions you get asked. It\u2019s in your face constantly. It\u2019s more about, \u2018Can you contextualize it and can you maintain perspective with it?\u2019 And we\u2019ve got a team kind of preconditioned to be pretty neutral.<\/p>\n
“We try to maintain that environmentally around them with our approach and with the approach that they come in with every single day. But we\u2019ve also got guys that have a pretty healthy emotional thing that doesn\u2019t really go too high or low.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Around The NBA analyzes the biggest topics in the NBA during the season.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI (AP) \u2014 The Oklahoma City Thunder should have been angry. It was Saturday night. They had just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[56984,2097,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-548753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ap-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115927234537376262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}