Oklahoma City has seven players score in double-digits as it dominates Memphis with 51-point blowout in the series opener on Sunday.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Memphis Grizzlies 131-80 in Game 1 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series on Sunday, the fifth-biggest margin of victory in NBA postseason history.
The 51-point margin was seven points shy of the record and was the largest Game 1 win in NBA playoff history.
Jalen Williams scored 20 points and Chet Holmgren had 19 points and 10 rebounds. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s scoring champion with nearly 33 points per game, scored just 15. The Thunder still shot 50.5% from the field.
“We were amped up,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “Give the guys a lot of credit for the week of practice that we had. It’s a sneaky tough week because it’s a lot of days without games and it gets you out of rhythm of games.”
Oklahoma City, which finished the regular-season with a league-best 68-14 record, looked every bit the part of an overall No. 1 seed.
THUNDER TAKE GAME 1 AT HOME 🙌
It’s the largest margin of victory in a Game 1 in playoff history. #NBAPlayoffs presented by Google pic.twitter.com/7DH8meBm2g
— NBA (@NBA) April 20, 2025
Sizzling from the start
The week off for the Thunder didn’t slow down the NBA’s best team this season — one that won 68 games and set a league record for point differential at 12.9 per game.
The Thunder opened a 35-point lead in the first half. That was the biggest first-half lead of any playoff Game 1 in the league’s digital play-by-play era that goes back to 1996-97.
Oklahoma City had 35-point leads twice — 61-26 and 63-28. The Thunder settled for a 68-36 lead at halftime, the biggest halftime lead of any playoff game in franchise history, as well as the biggest halftime deficit ever for the Grizzlies in a playoff game.
A rare first-half margin
Since 1997, there have been only two NBA playoff games where one team led by more than 35 points.
Both were done by the Cleveland Cavaliers when LeBron James played there.
The Cavs led at Boston by 41 points twice (70-29 and 72-31) in the first half of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals on May 19, 2017. And the Cavs led Atlanta by 38 points (74-36) in Game 2 of the East semifinals on May 4, 2016.
And Shai only had 15
Go figure: The Thunder won by 51 points on a day where their MVP favorite, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, was “held” to only 15 points.
“I was impressed with how the guys came out and played,” Daigneault said.
Some turnabout, perhaps?
This wasn’t the most one-sided game in Thunder-Grizzlies history. Not even close.
Memphis beat Oklahoma City 152-79 on Dec. 2, 2021 — the 73-point margin there being the biggest in NBA history.
Game 2 is Tuesday (7:30 ET, TNT).
