{"id":322633,"date":"2025-12-02T11:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T11:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322633\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T11:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T11:29:08","slug":"will-the-thunder-break-the-warriors-wins-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/322633\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Thunder Break the Warriors’ Wins Record?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder drives to the basket against Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors in the 4th quarter at Chase Center on January 29, 2025. (Lachlan Cunningham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

At the risk of this becoming an Oklahoma City Thunder newsletter<\/a> that occasionally also writes about football<\/a>, hockey<\/a>, baseball<\/a> and women\u2019s skateboarding<\/a>, we do have to cover OKC a lot because, well, they\u2019re absolutely shredding through the NBA right now.<\/p>\n

Just like last season, they lead the league in net rating<\/a>, this time at +15.2 \u2014 or 2.4 points per 100 clear of a year ago, when OKC had the second-highest figure<\/a> in post-merger history (trailing only the 1995-96 Bulls\u2019 +13.4 mark<\/a>). At 20-1 so far this year, they are just the fourth team ever<\/a> to start out with 20+ wins in their first 21 games during a season:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And as part of that, they\u2019ve currently won 12 consecutive games, with a visit to \u2014 who else? \u2014 the Golden State Warriors (No. 1 on our list above) coming up Tuesday<\/a>, followed by a set of very winnable games against the Dallas Mavericks, Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns, the latter in the NBA Cup quarterfinals<\/a>, before whatever happens after that in the Cup. (Remember, the Cup semifinals do count toward regular-season standings and streaks<\/a>, while the Cup final doesn\u2019t. Because that makes sense.)<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u2019s Zach Harper asked on Monday<\/a>, When will the Thunder lose again? Luckily, that\u2019s something my Elo forecast model<\/a> can help estimate. Here\u2019s a look at OKC\u2019s probability of extending their regular-season win streak a certain number of additional games, including the NBA Cup semifinal against either the Lakers or Spurs<\/a>, if they advance past the Suns:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Most likely, they will win another 2 games, maybe 3 or 4, before the streak comes to a close at 14-16 straight overall. There\u2019s a 32 percent chance the streak survives the NBA Cup \u2014 again, not counting the championship \u2014 and a little less than a 10 percent chance they go into Christmas Day against the Spurs with the streak intact at 21 wins and counting. Of course, they do also have a 1-in-178 chance of tying the 1971-72 Lakers\u2019 record of 33 consecutive wins<\/a>, which would happen on January 15 against Houston. If that does happen, OKC would be an insane 41-1 on the season, which not even the \u201896 Bulls or \u201816 Warriors did<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That probably won\u2019t happen, though you never know. Just as compelling as the Thunder\u2019s current streak, though, is the question of whether they can \u2014 or even want to \u2014 break the 2015-16 Warriors\u2019 single-season record of 73 wins, and where this year\u2019s Thunder may eventually find themselves in the conversation of basketball\u2019s greatest-ever teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder drives to the basket against Stephen Curry of the Golden State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-322633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322633","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=322633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}