Oklahoma City: NBA’s Top Team
With the NBA season starting its second half, three teams are clearly far above the rest of the league and all three play in the Western Conference. Record wise the top three teams are the Oklahoma City Thunder at 33-9, the San Antonio Spurs at 33-11 and the Los Angeles Clippers at 32-11. The next closest team is the Miami Heat at 26-12.
Oklahoma City has proven it still remains the team to beat in the west as they are 8-2 SU over their past 10 games and defeated the Los Angeles Clippers Tuesday night 109-97.
Nevertheless, any one of the three top teams with the best records is much better than the rest of the NBA. San Antonio owns the best record in the league since Christmas at 11-3, while the Thunder is 12-4 and the Clippers 11-4. Los Angeles has had the tougher schedule over that stretch and San Antonio has had the better point differential in those same games.
Even though the Clippers have played a tougher schedule of late and routed Memphis without star guard Chris Paul by 26 points, the top team remains the Thunder. Oklahoma City met head to head with the Clippers on Tuesday night and won, there is not much more to say than they now top the league.
Oklahoma City has the league’s top scorer in Kevin Durant who is currently averaging 29.9 points a game. He has increased his average thanks to a 39.5 points per game average over the teams last 7 games played. During that run, the Thunder is 6-1 SU.
The Thunder has a tough game on Wednesday following their win against the Clippers. The team has to travel to northern California to take on the Golden State Warriors. Golden State has played well the first half of the season and is currently in seventh place in the conference standings, seven games behind the front running Thunder.
Oklahoma City’s only blemish in their past seven games was an overtime loss at Denver 121-118.
The Thunder currently leads the league in scoring with an average of 106.1 points per game. OKC is tenth in rebounds per game, 18th in assists per game and 14th in points allowed per game at 97.
In their win against the Clippers in Los Angeles, the Thunder proved their worth winning for just the first time in the past five game in Los Angeles. Durant had 7 assists and 7 rebounds to go along with his team high 32 points.
Since the NBA season is so long with 82 games, teams have their ups and downs, good stretches and bad. However, the Thunder have proven over the first half of the season that they have the staying power and will be one of the teams to beat when the playoffs roll around.
The Thunder are currently amidst their longest road trip of the season in which they have started out 2-1, with games tonight against Golden State, followed Sacramento and they end their road trip on January 27 against the Los Angeles Lakers.
