The Oklahoma City Thunder are one of the best young teams in the entire NBA, and that young core could pile up a lot of regular season wins as soon as this season. While the current trend in the association is to load manage, the OKC Thunder remain a vibrant young team that genuinely cares about regular-season success, not just biding their time until the postseason.
This season, the NBA is adding a new wrinkle to the regular season by tossing an in-season tournament into the mix. The formula put the two conferences into three pools based on their previous seasons’ records. The OKC Thunder few the Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, and San Antonio Spurs.
The OKC Thunder could not be happier with their in-season tournament draw.
The NBA In Season tournament pool play games will take place on Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the month of November. These games will count toward the chase for the first-ever NBA Cup and the standard NBA standings,
OKC Thunder inseason tournament schedule. Great home slate as we knew. pic.twitter.com/n8rYDWBDvM
— Rylan Stiles (@Rylan_Stiles) August 15, 2023
For their first-ever in-season tournament game, the OKC Thunder will take on the Golden State Warriors on November 3rd in the Paycom Center before shipping out to Sacramento to take on the Kings on November 10th (note: the league is taking election night off again for the second straight year to pause activity for the league on an important day).
Then, the matchup everyone has circled as the NBA leans fully into this budding new rivalry to have Chet Holmgren face off with Victor Wembanyama on national television (TNT) in the Paycom Center. Pool play ends in Minnesota on November 28th, the same arena where the OKC Thunder ended their play-in tournament run a year ago.
Given how the travel schedule shakes out with a layoff prior to Sacramento and an easy trip up to Minnesota, and the nature of this young team taking things more seriously than a veteran ladened Golden State squad, the OKC Thunder could not have asked for a better draw than this in the first-ever In-season tournament.
At 2 p.m. on August 17th, we will get our hands on the full 82-game slate for the OKC Thunder, so stay plugged into Thunderous Intentions for all the latest on the team’s 2023-24 schedule.