After earning the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference each of the past two seasons, Oklahoma City appeared poised to do so once again in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
The Thunder was fresh off an NBA championship, and returned virtually the entire roster from a team that won it all. Due to injuries and improved competition across the Western Conferenece, though, the West’s top spot hasn’t come as easy for OKC this time around.<\/p>\n
Mark Daigneault’s team is 44-14 on the season and still is atop the conference, but Oklahoma City leads the second-place San Antonio Spurs by just 2.5 games. Following a victory against the Detriot Pistons, Victor Wembenyama and company have notched a 41-16 record.<\/p>\n
In 2024-25, the Thunder finished 68-14 and held a 16-game advantage against the No. 2 seed Houston Rockets. In addition to the Thunder not reaching 68 wins this time around, the Western Conference is more competitive, as San Antonio has emerged into a realistic contender.<\/p>\n
OKC has a tough stretch upcoming, and while the group is still in a solid position to have good seeding in the postseason, a few too many slip ups could cost Oklahoma City the top seed. The Thunder’s next three games are against Toronto, Detroit and Denver, meaning the team could lose the No. 1 spot with a bad week combined with an unscathed showing from the Spurs.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City lost just two games in the Paycom Center during the 2024-25 postseason, and would receive significant value in earning the NBA’s top seed to receive home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.<\/p>\n
To do that, though, the Thunder will have to survive a brutal end-of-season schedule that sees the team meet Detroit twice, Denver three times, Boston twice, New York twice and the Lakers twice.<\/p>\n
San Antonio isn’t the only team threaten OKC for the NBA’s best record, as the Detroit Pistons are also just a few games back. The Pistons are 42-14 this season, and hold a .750 winning percentage, just .009 behind the Thunder.<\/p>\n
While Oklahoma City could still earn the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference without holding the best record, finishing with the NBA’s top mark would give OKC home-court advantage in a potential finals matchup between the two teams.<\/p>\n
The Thunder will be able to help its cause in the coming months with matchups against the Pistons on Feb. 25 and March 30.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City could receive a major boost late this week, as well, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Ajay Mitchell set to be reevaluated in upcoming days.<\/p>\n
Want to join the discussion? Like\u00a0Thunder on SI<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook and\u00a0follow us on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0to stay up to date on all the latest Thunder news. You can also\u00a0meet the team<\/a>\u00a0behind the coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After earning the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference each of the past two seasons, Oklahoma City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":["post-622439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-oklahomacity","tag-oklahomacitythunder","tag-thunder"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116127109394622233","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622439","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=622439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}