{"id":595594,"date":"2026-04-09T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595594\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:59:09","slug":"nba-oklahoma-city-thunder-secure-top-spot-in-western-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/595594\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA: Oklahoma City Thunder secure top spot in Western Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder clinched top spot in the Western Conference and home court advantage through the NBA play-offs with a 128-110 win against the Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The comfortable victory ensured the Thunder held off the San Antonio Spurs to secure the NBA&#8217;s best regular-season record of 64-16 and claim the Western Conference&#8217;s number one seed for the third consecutive season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thunder&#8217;s Chet Holmgren led the way with 30 points and 14 rebounds while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander contributed 20 points and 11 assists to extend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/basketball\/articles\/c70ndx50x7lo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his record<\/a> for the most consecutive games with 20 or more points to 140.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Clippers, who had won eight of their past nine matches, face a key trip to Portland Trail Blazers on Friday with the two sides battling for eighth place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The team that finishes in eighth will only require one win in the play-in tournament to advance to the play-offs, while the team finishing ninth will have to beat 10th seeds the Golden State Warriors and the loser of the seventh against eighth match to keep their season alive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elsewhere, the San Antonio Spurs beat the Trail Blazers 112-101 to extend their record in their past 20 games to 18-2. Spurs guard De&#8217;Aaron Fox starred with 25 points, five rebounds, and seven assists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Denver Nuggets won their 10th consecutive match to tighten their grip on third place in the Western Conference. Jamal Murray scored a team-high 26 points in the 136-119 win over the Memphis Grizzlies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Atlanta Hawks failed to guarantee a play-off spot after losing 122-116 to the Cleveland Cavaliers but can still secure a top-six finish in the Eastern Conference with victory in one of their final two regular-season matches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Eastern Conference top seeds Detroit Pistons demolished the Milwaukee Bucks 137-111 while the Orlando Magic beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 132-120.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker scored 37 points in 37 minutes to lead his side to a 112-107 win over the Dallas Mavericks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder clinched top spot in the Western Conference and home court advantage through the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-595594","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\/595594","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=595594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}