Throughout the regular season, the OKC Thunder proved themselves to be as close to flawless as any team could possibly dream to be.
Just 24 minutes into Sunday's Game 1 matchup against the Memphis Grizzlies, however, it appears they managed to only strengthen this kind of sentiment by seemingly fixing arguably their biggest on-court weakness.
Easily the most frequently mentioned criticism about this Thunder squad during the 2024-25 campaign has been its lack of a scoring punch outside of superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Despite rostering an All-Star in Jalen Williams, who has averaged 21.6 points per game this year, and rising stud big Chet Holmgren, who, at 7-foot-1, can buy a bucket both inside the paint and from beyond the arc, based on both the eye-test and advanced metrics, Oklahoma City has surprisingly struggled to stay productive on offense without SGA's services.
In an exciting turn of events, in the first half of 2025 NBA Playoff action, this weakness somehow seems to have completely dissipated.
Thunder drop 66 points vs Grizzlies largely without SGA's help
By the time the buzzer sounded at the end of the second quarter, the Thunder found themselves sporting a 68-36 lead over Memphis, the largest halftime lead in OKC history.
Though this feat is certainly impressive on its own, what makes it all the more attention-grabbing is the fact that Gilgeous-Alexander accounted for just 9 of these points on a rather underwhelming 20.0 percent shooting from the field (2-for-10 from the floor and 1-for-6 from deep).
With their centerpiece struggling, co-star Jalen Williams found himself stepping up in the scoring department, dropping 14 points on 58.3 percent shooting from the field, while Chet Holmgren added 9 of his own.
Isaiah Hartenstein found himself playing a major role in this area of the game, as he was heavily active in pick-and-roll and stop-and-pop sets and accumulating 14 points on a whopping 87.5 percent shooting.
One of their biggest X-factor contributors in spark-plug win Aaron Wiggins also saw 11 points on 66.7 percent shooting from the floor and 75.0 percent shooting from distance
Without Shai on the floor, the Thunder still managed to go on a 28-10 run in the second quarter, a far cry from their typical production that has seen the team drop by as many as nine points in their points per 100 possessions averages with the guard sidelined throughout the year.
Without question, the first half of play in Sunday's Game 1 was one of the most dominant in Thunder history and served as an encouraging sign that this offense does, in fact, have the potential to dominate even without Gilgeous-Alexander contributing his league-leading scoring efforts.