Jared Weiss

Teams that win 33 or fewer games aren't good.

They don't make the playoffs.

They are definite lottery teams.

The last time OKC got blown out by a team like that was February 2022 in a game against the Kings.

You have to go all the way back to their last tanking season when they themselves won like 22 games or whatever.

But of course they weren't a good team.

So it's not all that surprising.

What about the last time this happened when OKC was actually good?

You have to go back to 2017, the very end of Russ's MVP season.

They lost by 21 to Phoenix.

Personally, I was shocked that the Russ PG Mellow team never had a loss like this because in my memory, all of their losses were that Charlotte game.

But the point is that this sort of game, exceedingly rare in OKC's franchise history, only happening two other times in OKC history when they were actually a playoff caliber team.

But it still doesn't totally capture how big of a what this game was because this version of OKC is better than all those previous versions.

So let's go league-wide.

This time, I searched through the last 20 years to find examples of a team on a 60-win pace who lost to a team on a 33-win pace, or worse, by at least 20 points.

The last time it happened before this game against Charlotte, April 2022, the Suns lost to a tanking Thunder team by 21 points.

But I checked the box score.

Phoenix sat all their guys.

It was at the end of the season, so it doesn't really count.

The next example was early in that season.