OKLAHOMA CITY — Once again, the Oklahoma City Thunder landed a haymaker for their first punch of the playoffs.
The defending champions opened with a dominant performance at the Paycom Center, rolling to a 119-84 rout of the Phoenix Suns in Sunday’s Game 1. It was similar to the Thunder’s start to last year’s postseason, when they blew out the Memphis Grizzlies by 51 points in Game 1 of a series they swept to take the first step in the title run.
The Thunder joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 1986 and 1987 as the only teams in NBA history to open consecutive postseasons with wins by at least 35 points, according to ESPN Research.
“It’s not like we’re going into Game 1s being like, ‘All right, let’s just blow them out,'” said Thunder wing Jalen Williams, who had 22 points, seven rebounds and six assists. “It’s more just like, ‘How hard can we play to set the tone?’ For us, not even for the Suns. Let’s set a tone of like what’s expected from the first guy to the 15th man.”
Oklahoma City, the league’s top-ranked defense in each of the past two regular seasons, used a familiar formula to bury the Suns. The Thunder converted 19 turnovers into 34 points.
“I’m sure those guys take the regular-season game serious, but they feel like this is the time of year,” Suns star Devin Booker said. “They’re trying to go for it again. Every time down, [we can’t] turn it over. I think that fuels everything — fuels them, fuels the crowd. Turns into a domino effect.”
The Thunder had a 34-2 advantage in points off of turnovers, the largest differential in that category in a playoff game during the play-by-play era. The only other playoff occasion in which a team had a 30-point advantage in scoring off of turnovers occurred in Oklahoma City’s home blowout of the Denver Nuggets in Game 7 of last season’s Western Conference semifinals.
“Every time you’re playing against them, you’ve got to value the ball, value possessions, got to get a shot up — and we did not do that,” Suns coach Jordan Ott said. “Their physicality, their athleticism, their size, their length [and] their personnel forces you to continuously make good decisions and quick decisions. That’s part of it for sure that we’ll have to clean up.”
The schedule did the Suns no favor, as Phoenix had to fight to earn a playoff bid with a win over the Golden State Warriors in the final play-in game Friday night. After traveling Saturday, the Suns faced the overall top seed in a 2:30 p.m. local tip on Sunday afternoon.
The Suns scored the first five points, but Game 1 wasn’t competitive for long. The Thunder were up by a double-digit margin for the final 38 minutes, six seconds, leading by 15 at the end of the first quarter, 21 at halftime and 31 at the end of the third quarter.
“They’re a little bit more tired, so that probably has something to do with it,” said reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who finished with 25 points and seven assists despite shooting only 5-of-18 from the floor and sitting out the fourth quarter. “But we still have to do our job and go out there and win.
“This [Phoenix] team is going to get better throughout the series. They have good players, well coached, play really hard, play the right way. So we’ve got to be ready to get better as well and expect a better team on the other end.”
