Oklahoma City is down to the final week of the regular season, and it could use some hot shooting to finish strong.<\/p>\n
Over the next week and change, the Thunder will be looking to cap off their regular season on a high note. With the San Antonio Spurs still in hot pursuit of the top seed in the West, the Thunder will need to close out the year strong to secure a third straight No. 1 seed.<\/p>\n
While the Spurs getting a loss or two in this final stretch would help immensely, the Thunder also know that simply going 4-1 to end the year would do the job. After a dominant win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday night, it\u2019s clear that one of the keys to securing the league\u2019s best record will be to finish the season in a rhythm from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
In the win over the Lakers, the Thunder shot 19-of-42 from 3-point range as the offense was on a roll all night. While shooting 45% from deep won\u2019t be sustainable or expected from the Thunder in this final stretch, hovering around the 40% mark over the final week would be a huge step in the right direction for a Thunder team that\u2019s been streaky from outside all season.<\/p>\n
Shooting 36% from deep this season, the Thunder are just outside the top 10 in 3-point percentage and are 15th in the league in 3-point volume at 37.7 shots a game. For the Thunder to win in the postseason, they will need to find some consistency in their outside approach, and getting some rhythm to finish the regular season could put them in a great spot ahead of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
While the Thunder should easily win games against the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns in their final two home contests, the Thunder\u2019s three-game road swing against both LA teams and the Denver Nuggets should provide a bit more of a challenge.<\/p>\n
Considering the Thunder\u2019s struggles to shoot from outside on the road in the 2025 playoffs, these matchups to close the season could give Oklahoma City one last confidence boost if it can carry over any of the shooting success it just had against the Lakers.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s hard to imagine any level of outside shooting success or struggles in the final week of the regular season will truly mean much for the postseason, it would certainly be a more positive sign to see the Thunder begin catching fire from deep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City is down to the final week of the regular season, and it could use some hot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-698182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-oklahoma","11":"tag-oklahoma-city","12":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","13":"tag-oklahomacity","14":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","15":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116347735113959608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698182","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=698182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}