For the second time this season, the OKC Thunder will face the team most analysts tapped to come out of the West – the Los Angeles Lakers.
Through two and half weeks of play, these clubs are the focus of plenty of hot takes. Some experts are already stating the Thunder have the potential to be the worst team in league history based on their atrocious net differential.
Of course, that was before the Thunder almost beat the Warriors, did beat the Lakers, and were in the thick of clutch time versus the Clippers. Their differential is no longer the worst in the NBA (minus -12.8) as the Pistons supplanted them for that auspicious distinction.
OKC Thunder vs Lakers preview – Round two
As for the Lakers, there remain more questions than answers. Nor will the responses to those questions be immediately forthcoming given their easy current schedule. LA just completed their fifth consecutive game versus sub-par teams winning all but the first game against our Thunder.
As of this writing, the Lakers’ next 12 games (including this one) features just four teams who possess a winning record and two with even records. Granted, the Bucks can’t really be considered a lower-tier team they’re simply dealing with injuries.
That said, the first 20 games for the Lakers aren’t likely to offer many answers about how the new Big 3 can function when they aren’t facing a good cross-section of the elite clubs. Nor did they do much to help themselves by allowing the Rockets to almost beat them on Tuesday.
That the Thunder have one win in seven tries and it came against these Lakers in a dramatic reversal of a 26 point deficit adds intrigue to this meeting.
With that let’s dive into the semantics of this match.