{"id":406226,"date":"2026-01-13T09:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T09:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/406226\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T09:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T09:40:12","slug":"thunder-reclaim-good-standing-in-latest-nba-power-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/406226\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder reclaim good standing in latest NBA power rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late December and early January was perhaps one of the most dire times for an Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> team that was once on pace to break the regular season wins record. And yet, the defending champion found its way back to the top.<\/p>\n

Three losses to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> headlined a 6-6 stretch that left Oklahoma City searching inward. The Thunder<\/a> came out of the other side and are riding a three-game win streak into their next-most important matchup on Tuesday, a rematch with San Antonio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NBA.com\u2019s John Schuhmann released his power rankings for Week 13<\/a> of the season and Oklahoma City regained the top spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Thunder suffered another surprising loss last Monday, getting clobbered by the Hornets<\/a> at home,\u201d Schuhmann wrote. \u201cTheir three wins since haven\u2019t been especially impressive, but they are tied for the fewest losses (they\u2019re 7-2) since Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Mark Daigneault gives props to current rival, former player<\/a><\/p>\n

OKC\u2019s upcoming schedule<\/p>\n

As referenced above, Tuesday\u2019s rematch against Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs<\/a> is, without a doubt, Oklahoma City\u2019s most important game to date. A team once deemed unbeatable has the chance to lose to the same team four times in a month\u2019s span.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thursday brings yet another big West matchup against the Houston Rockets<\/a>. Houston is enduring a similar stretch to OKC\u2019s just two weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The last matchup for the Thunder this week is against the Miami Heat<\/a> on Saturday. This week can go a long way in proving that Oklahoma City is back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late December and early January was perhaps one of the most dire times for an Oklahoma City Thunder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-406226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406226","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=406226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}