{"id":661271,"date":"2026-05-10T05:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/661271\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T05:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:56:10","slug":"thunder-pull-away-from-lakers-again-to-take-3-0-series-lead-theyve-kicked-our-ass-3-straight-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/661271\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder pull away from Lakers again to take 3-0 series lead: ‘They’ve kicked our ass 3 straight games’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will be the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> in the Western Conference finals, barring the most shocking comeback in the history of the NBA.<\/p>\n

With a 131-108 win over the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>, the Thunder took a 3-0 lead on Saturday and remain undefeated through seven postseason games. They are 27-1 since the start of February in games Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> has played.<\/p>\n

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They go for the sweep Monday in Los Angeles<\/a> (10:30 p.m. ET, Prime Video). No NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 series deficit.<\/p>\n

The Lakers at least put up a fight for the first half in front of their home crowd, going back-and-forth and entering halftime with a two-point lead, 59-57. They lost control when OKC opened the third quarter with a 21-6 run, got the deficit back down to five points late in the third, and then the Thunder hit the gear only the Thunder are capable of hitting.<\/p>\n

LA simply looked gassed by the end, as if it had been playing the best team in the NBA without its most important player for three straight games. The Lakers waved the white flag by emptying their bench with 3:38 remaining in the game.<\/p>\n

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The Thunder outscored them 74-49 in the second half.<\/p>\n

Once again, the Lakers succeeded in preventing an otherworldly game from Gilgeous-Alexander (23 points on 7-of-20 shooting), but OKC\u2019s deep supporting cast again made that a non-issue. Six other players scored in double figures, and the team collectively shot 56.4% from the field and 44.7% from deep, with nine total turnovers.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no telling how this series would have gone down had Luka Don\u010di\u0107<\/a> been healthy (or Thunder star Jalen Williams<\/a> for that matter), but the actual result has been as expected. The Lakers have pushed the Thunder at times, but never enough across an entire game. Every loss has been by double-digits.<\/p>\n

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As Lakers head coach JJ Redick<\/a> put it with reporters after the game<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve kicked our ass three straight games. They\u2019re an incredible basketball team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Counting the regular season, the Lakers are now 0-7 against the Thunder this season with an average scoring margin of 25.4 points. The closest loss has been by nine points. The only game in which the Lakers were actually healthy at the start of the game was the April 2 date when Don\u010di\u0107 and Austin Reaves<\/a> both got hurt.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s a turnaround still to come. The way the Lakers looked in the fourth quarter didn\u2019t inspire confidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It will be the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals, barring the most shocking comeback in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[12993,64,30097,63,12831,63857,47572,481,7232,11473,590,192049,5548,224336,12841,85],"class_list":["post-661271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ajay-mitchell","tag-au","tag-austin-reaves","tag-australia","tag-jalen-williams","tag-jj-redick","tag-lebron","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-okc","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-postseason-games","tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661271","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=661271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}