Chet Holmgren scored 24 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Los Angeles Lakers 108-90 in Game 1 of the Western Conference semi-finals.
Holmgren added 12 rebounds and three blocks. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 18 points, going 8-of-15 from the field and 2-of-3 from the free-throw line, and contributed six assists.
LeBron James led the Lakers with 27 points and six assists, while Rui Hachimura scored 18.
The Thunder took the lead for good with 38 seconds left in the first quarter. The score was 61-53 at half-time, and Oklahoma City outscored Los Angeles by 10 points across the final two quarters.
Game 2 of the Western Conference semi-finals tips on Thursday.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said he is not focused on prior meetings or outside expectations. “Every game’s unwritten,” Daigneault said. “Everything before the game doesn’t matter, and everything after the game doesn’t matter. All that matters is the ball’s going to go up at 7.30, the score’s going to be 0-0, and the team with more points is going to win. And you see that time and time again in competition. You can see it in different sports. That’s just a law of competition, and I think the more our team has rooted into that over time, it’s allowed us to stay very present and allowed us to block out any noise that’s outside of that.”
After the loss, Lakers coach JJ Redick said: “When they did get an offensive rebound, they absolutely killed us. We’ve got to do a better job of building back out on the offensive rebound. You’re playing the world champs, your margin for error in terms of mistakes is not that high. You can make mistakes. Basketball’s a game full of mistakes. There’s just too many tonight. We’ve got to clean that up. We’ve just got to do a better job with execution. It comes down to just the attention to detail on that. I know we’ll clean things up and be better.”