Thunder's regular-season dominance carried into the playoffs

The Oklahoma City Thunder routinely blew out opponents en route to 68 regular-season victories, including a 41-point win over the Wizards, a 37-point drubbing of the Raptors and a 36-point rout of the Pelicans.

It's not normal for a regular-season juggernaut to replicate those performances in the playoffs when the game slows down, possessions dry up and physicality intensifies. This OKC team is bucking the norm.

Their 124-94 victory over the Timberwolves on Wednesday marked their fourth win by a margin of at least 30 points in the postseason, the most by any team in a single postseason, per ESPN Research. As part of the run, they previously crushed the Nuggets by 32 (in a Game 7), the Nuggets by 43 and the Grizzlies by 51 (in their postseason opener).

For context, no team in history came even close to producing so many blowout wins in the same postseason run. The only teams that managed two 30-point wins were the 1986-87 Lakers and 2007-08 Celtics, both of which went on to win the championship. 

The ominous part is that Thunder landed knockout blows to opponents in closeout games in back-to-back series. The wins resembled a boxer learning their opponent's tendencies throughout a bout (in this case, a seven-game series), before putting them to sleep. That's exactly how it felt when OKC held Minnesota to a season-low nine points in the first quarter of Wednesday's victory. 

Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander admitted that the first quarter felt like the perfect storm of everything clicking for his team.

"It almost seemed like we did everything we were supposed to do," he said, via ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "We made it tough on the guys we were supposed to make it tough on. Well, I thought it was tough for everybody [on the Timberwolves]. We were clicking on all cylinders as far as what their tendencies are, what our game plan is, how we want to impact the game, how we want to impact the ball."

If Thunder can produce another 30-point blowout win in the Finals, they would establish themselves as one of the most dominant teams in NBA history. Any arguments to the contrary would be in bad faith.