131-80 in Game 1<\/a> of their Western Conference playoff series on Sunday, the fifth-biggest victory margin in NBA postseason history and the largest in a Game 1.<\/p>\n\u201cWe were amped up,\u201d Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. \u201cGive the guys a lot of credit for the week of practice that we had. It\u2019s a sneaky tough week because it\u2019s a lot of days without games and it gets you out of rhythm of games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 51-point margin capped a stat-filled Sunday in OKC. Some highlights:<\/p>\n
A 51-point win<\/p>\n
For a while, it seemed like the Thunder had a chance at the biggest playoff win ever.<\/p>\n
There have been two 58-point playoff margins: Denver beating New Orleans 121-63 on April 27, 2009, and the Minneapolis Lakers beating the St. Louis Hawks 133-75 on March 19, 1956.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Lakers beat Golden State by 56 (126-70) on April 21, 1973 and the Chicago Bulls beat the Milwaukee Bucks by 54 (120-66) on April 30, 2015.<\/p>\n
A 56-point lead<\/p>\n
The Thunder led by as many as 56 points, the biggest lead in a playoff game since Denver led New Orleans by 58 points in that 2009 game.<\/p>\n
OKC held leads of 127-71 and 129-73. The Grizzlies scored seven of the game\u2019s final nine points, which kept Memphis from enduring the biggest playoff loss ever.<\/p>\n
Sizzling from the start<\/p>\n
The week off for the Thunder didn\u2019t slow down the NBA\u2019s best team this season \u2014 one that won 68 games and set a league record for point differential at 12.9 per game.<\/p>\n
The Thunder opened a 35-point lead in the first half. That was the biggest first-half lead of any playoff Game 1 in the league\u2019s digital play-by-play era that goes back to 1996-97.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City had 35-point leads twice \u2014 61-26 and 63-28. The Thunder settled for a 68-36 lead at halftime, the biggest halftime lead of any playoff game in franchise history, as well as the biggest halftime deficit ever for the Grizzlies in a playoff game.<\/p>\n
A rare 1st-half margin<\/p>\n
Since 1997, there have been only two NBA playoff games where one team led by more than 35 points.<\/p>\n
Both were done by the Cleveland Cavaliers when LeBron James played there.<\/p>\n
The Cavs led at Boston by 41 points twice (70-29 and 72-31) in the first half of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals on May 19, 2017. And the Cavs led Atlanta by 38 points (74-36) in Game 2 of the East semifinals on May 4, 2016.<\/p>\n
And Shai only had 15<\/p>\n
Go figure: The Thunder won by 51 points on a day where their MVP favorite, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, was \u201cheld\u201d to only 15 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was impressed with how the guys came out and played,\u201d Daigneault said.<\/p>\n
Some turnabout, perhaps?<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t the most one-sided game in Thunder-Grizzlies history. Not even close.<\/p>\n
Memphis beat Oklahoma City 152-79 on Dec. 2, 2021 \u2014 the 73-point margin there being the biggest in NBA history.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City\u2019s playoff run got off to a record-setting start. The Thunder beat the Memphis Grizzlies 131-80 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,301,294,185,1622,293,177,4070,6,446,11,586,475,179,209,66,483],"class_list":{"0":"post-98898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-grizzlies","11":"tag-lebron-james","12":"tag-mark-daigneault","13":"tag-memphis","14":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","15":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nba-basketball","18":"tag-nba-playoffs","19":"tag-ok-state-wire","20":"tag-oklahoma-city","21":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","22":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-tn-state-wire"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114683503352419760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98898","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=98898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}