Oklahoma City is still finding success with a lengthy injury report, but it still might not be enough to maintain the top spot in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
Coming out of the All-Star break, the Thunder had one of the most interesting situations in the league. With Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell all set to miss some extra time, the Thunder had the potential to drop several games.<\/p>\n
With a four-game stretch against the East now complete, including three games against projected playoff teams, the Thunder managed an inspiring 3-1 record. With the most shorthanded lineup yet, the Thunder still nearly managed to knock off the top seed in the East on the second night of a back to back before the Pistons pulled away on their home floor.<\/p>\n
Now sitting at 45-15, the Thunder are narrowly above the 42-16 Spurs. While Oklahoma City has played a couple of more games, the only column that truly matters at this point is the loss column, and the Thunder have no room to play with on that front, given that the Spurs own the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Although the Thunder have stayed afloat and found success while being shorthanded, their lead at the top of the West has shrunk dramatically in February, mostly thanks to San Antonio\u2019s current 10-game winning streak. While the Spurs will surely lose some more games at some point over the final few weeks, they\u2019ve done enough to get back into the mix for the No. 1 seed and should probably stay within striking distance for the rest of the season, assuming health.<\/p>\n
Of course, relief could soon be on the way for Oklahoma City. While it seems plausible that all of the players who played in Toronto and were ruled out for Detroit will be back in action on Friday night against the Nuggets, Gilgeous-Alexander and Mitchell could be in the mix as well, given their original re-evaluation dates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the Thunder can begin getting healthier and continue their success into March, where the schedule gets a bit lighter from an overall load standpoint, there\u2019s a real chance Oklahoma City can rebuild a healthy lead at No. 1. On the other hand, it might only take another week without Gilgeous-Alexander on the floor for San Antonio to suddenly swoop in and snatch the top seed and begin building its own lead.<\/p>\n
The Thunder\u2019s success without some of their top guys should be applauded, and this stretch could very well be the reason Oklahoma City has home-court advantage throughout the West in the playoffs. However, there\u2019s still a golden opportunity for the Spurs to move past the Thunder if Oklahoma City can\u2019t get healthy soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City is still finding success with a lengthy injury report, but it still might not be enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626593,"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-626592","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\/116138536535633573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626592","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=626592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}