John Schuhmann<\/a> wrote. \u201cBut they\u2019re 3-0 for the second straight year.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Thunder won their first seven games last season, and certainly have a chance at a similar start this year. Their win in Atlanta on Saturday was the first of two straight rest-advantage games on the road, but they\u2019ll be at a disadvantage when they return home to face the Kings on Tuesday. They went 9-1 in rest-disadvantage games last season, with the only loss coming in Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City\u2019s record speaks for itself, but the reason this team sits atop the power rankings after the first week of the season should be about the way they\u2019ve won these games. This Thunder team is without so many rotation players due to injury, including the team\u2019s second best player in Jalen Williams. It would be hard for any team to go undefeated during this stretch considering what Oklahoma City is missing, but the Thunder just continue to win.<\/p>\n
The other key fact here is that Oklahoma City is playing far from its best basketball and still remains undefeated. The Thunder has traditionally been a rock solid 3-point shooting team during its rise to the top of the NBA. Through three games, though, they rank No. 29 \u2014 second to last \u2014 in 3-point percentage. They have been ice cold in terms of shooting, yet still found a way to remain unbeaten.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City is still deserving of the top spot, and one they get key players back from injury, the operation on the floor will only look better. It\u2019s a big season for the Thunder, and they have all the ingredients to go back-to-back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the first week of NBA basketball to kick off a brand new season, the reigning champions are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-244491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}