The Oklahoma City Thunder will have to navigate a daunting rest-of-season schedule, one that ranks the toughest among the 30 NBA teams.
The Thunder are in third place in a ruthless Western Conference, but will have to fight to stay there, with 17 of their 25 remaining games against teams with winning records at this point of the season, according to NBA.com.
OKC will have three games each against the top two teams in the respective conference — two against the Denver Nuggets and another one agains the Golden State Warriors, while also facing the Milwaukee Bucks once and the new-look Toronto Raptors twice before their season is under wraps.
The Thunder will play 14 of their final 25 games at home, where they've accumulated a respectable 20-7 record, but they have twice as many games with a rest disadvantage (four) as they have with a rest advantage (two). One of those rest disadvantage games is at the tail end of a five-games-in-seven-days stretch from March 2-8 that includes road games against the San Antonio Spurs, Portland Trail Blazers and LA Clippers.
Russell Westbrook and MVP candidate Paul George have hit their stride, winning 11 of their last 13 games before the All-Star break, a trend they will look to continue despite the murderers' row of opponents that await them in the next seven weeks.
The Thunder will close out the season with a brutal back-to-back, with a home game against the Houston Rockets on Apr. 9 and a road game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Apr. 10 — two teams that will surely be fighting for playoff positioning until the last fixture.
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