NBA Playoffs Takeaways: The Thunder Are Already Rolling, and Still Have Another Gear to Hit

After sweeping away the Suns in the first round of the NBA playoffs, the Thunder are now well on their way to sweeping the Lakers in the second. Despite a close game at halftime, the reigning champions pulled away in Los Angeles for what proved to be a comfortable 131–108 win to take a 3–0 lead in the series.

The Thunder have not lost a playoff game this year, and have won all but one of their contests so far by double digits—and it’s possible they still have yet to reach the height of their powers.

Below we break down three things we learned from Oklahoma City’s win in Game 3 over the Lakers.

The Thunder still have another gear to hit, which is a scary thought

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is well below his usual scoring numbers thus far in the series with the Lakers, but he hasn’t needed to drop 30 points a night for the Thunder to keep on rolling. In Game 3, Ajay Mitchell stepped up for Oklahoma City. It was Jared McCain with 18 points off the bench in Game 2 and Chet Holmgren led the way with 24 points to open the series.

Mitchell had 24 points and 10 assists to lead the team Saturday, just ahead of Gilgeous-Alexander’s 23. Mitchell, the 38th pick in the 2024 NBA draft, had nine points in the fourth quarter to ice the game. What’s scary is that Jalen Williams has been out with a hamstring strain since Game 2 of the first round and Gilgeous-Alexander has yet to have an MVP-caliber game this series that we all know he’s capable of.

Oklahoma City hasn’t lost thus far in the playoffs, now just one win shy of the Western Conference finals. The Thunder’s depth has taken them to a new level and opponents never know which OKC player will pop off on any given night.

Rui Hachimura’s postseason sharpshooting is no fluke

While it’s tough to find anything that truly stands out as a “bright spot” when you’re down 3–0 in a playoff series, the Lakers should at least feel pretty good about the impressive shooting run that Rui Hachimura is currently on. Earlier this postseason, the graphic showing Hachimura as the most efficient three-point shooter in NBA playoff history made the rounds.

At first glance, it’s easy to think of such a graphic as a comical oddity rather than reflective of the true reality. Three-point shooting happens in spurts, and Hachimura surely just had a small enough sample size that was pushing him to the top of the all-time list.

But instead, he just keeps making buckets.

Is Hachimura going to continue hitting threes at a 58% rate for the rest of his postseason career? It feels unlikely. There is a part of this that is still small sample size. That said, he hasn’t shot less than 50% from beyond the arc in a game so far this playoff run. At some point, the trend is the trend.

Lakers must limit turnovers to avoid sweep

Turnovers plagued the Lakers in the second half of Saturday’s Game 3 as Los Angeles squandered its strong start to the game. The Lakers turned the ball over 16 times compared to just nine turnovers from the Thunder. Oklahoma City scored a whopping 30 points off turnovers while L.A. had just 11 points off OKC cough-ups. Austin Reaves struggled in the second half and turned the ball over five times in Game 3. A lot of that is credit to the Thunder defense, who held Reaves scoreless in the third quarter, but the Lakers must take care of the ball if they want any chance of grabbing a game on the Thunder. 

That’s a tall task against a dominant team like the Thunder, but L.A. was able to take a slight lead into halftime thanks to its shooting. It’s tough to keep that up over the course of a full game, but the Lakers have a recipe to catch the Thunder if they can knock down shots at a high rate and take care of the ball. Now with the season on the line, the Lakers need to be perfect in Monday’s Game 4 if they want any chance to hand the defending champs their first loss of the playoffs.

Relive the action of Game 3 as it happened with our live coverage below.

How we got here...

• Game 1: Thunder 108, Lakers 90
• Game 2: Thunder 125, Lakers 107

The Thunder have simply not slown down since winning Game 7 of the NBA Finals last year. OKC was the best team in the league all season, and stand undefeated in the playoffs thus far. Of their six wins, just one has come by single digits.

In Game 1 of this series, the Thunder simply wore down the Lakers in a war of attrition, extending their lead inch by inch before taking an 18-point victory. Los Angeles showed some fight in Game 2, winning the second quarter of the game—the first quarter it had won all series—but Oklahoma City came out of halftime absolutely firing, shooting a blistering 56.3% from three in the second half to take a 2–0 series lead as the games head to California.

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