Oklahoma City has had a phenomenal start to the season, and it could continue with a big NBA Cup performance.<\/p>\n
On Friday night, the Thunder will be in Utah to face the Jazz in their second NBA Cup game of the year. After a 31-point win against the Sacramento Kings in the Cup opener, the Thunder are already in a great position moving forward.<\/p>\n
Considering that point differential is the main tiebreaker in the NBA Cup standings beyond head-to-head, the Thunder should have a real shot at the No. 1 spot in the West, assuming they can take care of business in Utah.<\/p>\n
The Jazz have been a fun team through the first month of the season, but a season-ending injury to Walker Kessler has thwarted some of that early momentum. Even without their starting center, the Jazz have clearly made some improvements from last season, with Lauri Markkanen playing at an All-Star level again this season.<\/p>\n
Still, this one should be a convincing win for the 15-1 Thunder. While the Thunder are still beat up and have a lengthy injury report, that hasn\u2019t stopped them from getting big wins against some under-.500 teams this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If Oklahoma City could capture another big win against the Jazz, it should be in a position to take over the top spot in the NBA Cup standings out West soon. Meanwhile, the other two undefeated teams in West Group A, the Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves, will also play on Friday night, and the result of that could push the Thunder into that top spot ahead of next week\u2019s matchups.<\/p>\n
Currently, the Timberwolves would be the top seed in the West\u2019s Cup bracket, given that they hold a 2-0 record and have a +54 point differential. Meanwhile, the Suns are 2-0 with a +22, and the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers from West Group B are the only other remaining unbeatens, but haven\u2019t made any real progress in point differential.<\/p>\n
While the Thunder would have a home game in the quarterfinals as one of only two possible undefeated group winners, point differential could set the Thunder up for a matchup against Minnesota, given its impressive point differential thus far, and keep Oklahoma City from playing an extra matchup against Houston or Denver until the semifinals in Vegas.<\/p>\n
There are plenty of scenarios that could unfold for the Thunder in the NBA Cup, but point differential could be the difference in every situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City has had a phenomenal start to the season, and it could continue with a big NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-299858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}