The Oklahoma City Thunder are not merely beating the Los Angeles Lakers in this Western Conference semifinal. They are, according to the men closest to the league's last great superteams, building something that could swallow the next several years of NBA basketball.
A 131-108 demolition at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday night gave OKC a 3-0 stranglehold and pushed Inside the NBA's panel into superlatives normally reserved for finished products, not Game 3 of the second round.
"We might be watching the beginning of a dynasty, guys," Shaquille O'Neal said on the TNT broadcast. "You know, one thing I love about OKC is you can tell they're together. And kudos to the superstar SGA for keeping his guys involved. You see after every postgame interview brings the team up and they're just together. When a team is together like that, everything they do is in unison."
The scoring sheet sketched the rest. Seven Thunder players reached double figures. Reserve guard Ajay Mitchell led the way with 24 points off the bench. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 23 on a quiet night by his standards. Chet Holmgren posted 18 points and nine rebounds, and the bench again outscored its starting equivalents in stretches that turned a halftime deficit into a 23-point laugher.
The second half belonged entirely to Oklahoma City, who outscored Los Angeles 33-20 in the third quarter and 41-29 in the fourth. The Lakers, as in Game 2, led at the break and disappeared after it.
"Hey, bye-bye," Charles Barkley said. "I think the only way the Lakers can win a game is if they put these games in like a second and third quarter."
Kenny Smith pinpointed why the rotation has held up under playoff pressure. "They don't play well only because Shai is there or not there or Jaylen's there. They play well regardless," he said.
Holmgren, joining the panel by remote afterwards, chose a number rather than a name when asked who the next breakout would be. "It's hard to pick just one. I feel like we've seen it at different times every single game," Holmgren said. "Game two, J-Mack played 17 minutes and had 18 points. Tonight we just watched AJ take over the fourth quarter like that. We saw Zay come in and stretch the lead — he had three threes there in the second half. It really could be anybody. It just kind of depends on whose number is called that night, but we know everybody's ready."
He dropped the figure that left the studio audience laughing. "All 17 dudes come in and get their work in."
Holmgren also conceded what the Lakers have been quietly muttering about for two games. "Going on to the road up 20, you're not going to get anything favorable, but the focus and the emphasis is on what we can control," he said. "Focusing on the whistle is just taking away from that. So, we try to do our stuff."
O'Neal closed with the verdict the rest of the league will hear all summer if Game 4 finishes the sweep on Monday. "We didn't think we'd seen anything we didn't expect. We said, hey, maybe the Lakers could win a game. But this team here, man, they've had the best record three years in a row. Their confidence is through the roof."
Ernie Johnson supplied the only number that mattered for the bigger picture: in the last 20 years, eight number-one overall seeds have gone on to win the title. The Thunder, this year's top seed, are now four series wins away from cementing the dynasty O'Neal has already named.
