OKC Thunder in Familiar Spot Awaiting Play-In Results

The Thunder will have to wait to know their first-round opponent for a third straight year.

Mar 1, 2026; Dallas, Texas, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2) and head coach Mark Daigneault look on during the second quarter against the Dallas Mavericks at the American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Oklahoma City is again waiting on the play-in, and this week of waiting is becoming a postseason tradition.

On Sunday night, the NBA regular season wrapped up and featured the final game for 10 teams around the league. Meanwhile, another 12 teams, including the Thunder, will get a full week off in preparation for the first round of the playoffs.

However, the Thunder are in a more unique situation. As the top seed in the West, the Thunder will be waiting until the end of the week to know exactly which opponent will step into Paycom Center on Sunday for Game 1.

With the play-in tournament determining the final two seeds for each conference, the top two seeds, and especially the No. 1 seeds, are left waiting throughout the week. On Friday night, the No. 8 seed will be secured by whichever team wins that matchup.

As for now, the Thunder simply know they will play one of the Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers, LA Clippers and Golden State Warriors. While it isn’t necessarily ideal to have to wait so long to find out the opponent, this is simply business as usual for this era of the Thunder.

In 2024 and 2025, the Thunder were in the exact same situation, waiting until the Friday night play-in game wrapped up to know their opponent. Oklahoma City has had some mixed-ish results in Game 1s of those two first-round series.

While the Thunder ended up sweeping both series against the Pelicans in 2024 and the Grizzlies in 2025, they had some drastically different Game 1 performances. In 2024, the Thunder narrowly defeated the Pelicans in the first playoff game for the young core, and some first-game jitters were certainly present. However, those jitters didn’t exist a year later when the Thunder crushed Memphis by 51 points to begin their title run. 

After securing a championship last season, it’s hard to imagine anyone on the team will have any first-game jitters on Sunday against whoever the opponent may be. Considering the Thunder’s dominance in the first round over the past two years, this week of not knowing their opponent hasn’t hurt much.

Of course, the waiting game isn’t exclusive to the play-in and the Thunder’s first-round opponent. Last season, the Thunder actually had to wait longer after the first round to learn who their second-round matchup would be.

Ultimately, dominant teams with championship aspirations often have to wait on others to find out who their next opponent will be. Luckily for the Thunder, they’ve typically thrived in these situations.