内容摘要：“Every show is both an origin story and a manifesto,” said Batiste, a seven-time

“Every show is both an origin story and a manifesto,” said Batiste, a seven-time

to clinch the Western Conference title, a score that probably could have been a lot worse if the Thunder were so inclined.“This isn’t our goal,” Thunder guard,

said. “We didn’t start the season like we want to win the West. We want to win the NBA championship. Now we are a step closer to our goal and we’re happy about that. But it’s still four more games to go win, four really hard games to go win and we have to be the best version of ourselves for four nights to reach the ultimate goal.”A look inside the numbers paints a picture of how dominant this season has been for the Thunder:The biggest point differential per game in NBA history, including playoffs, was posted by the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks — who outscored teams by 12.6 points per game.

The Thunder are winning by 12.5 per game when counting the regular season and the playoffs (the NBA Cup championship game, by league rule, doesn’t figure into any official stats that are kept).That’s the second-biggest rate in league history, for now.

They have beaten 28 of the 29 other NBA teams by double figures at least once this season. The only team to avoid that fate against the Thunder was Golden State, which actually outscored Oklahoma City by an average of 4.7 points per game in their head-to-head matchups.

“They embody everything it means to be a team,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “And so, they deserve this. They deserve the opportunity that we have now. I couldn’t be happier for them because they invest so much in their own games, but they also invest so much in each other and in the team. And I just think it’s a really uncommon thing in professional basketball that they’ve built.”The Thunder have had long breaks between games during the playoffs the past two years, with mixed results.

They swept the New Orleans Pelicans in last year’s first round, thenin Game 1 of the conference semifinals after waiting eight days between games. The Thunder eventually lost that series 4-2.

After this year’s series against Memphis, the Thunder were in a similar situation. Denver’s first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers went seven games, so Daigneault gave the players some extra rest since there were nine days between games. The focus for the team was less on an opponent at first and more on fine-tuning his team’s issues.“I mean, really just reinforcement of fundamentals,” he said heading into the Denver series. “The game defensively is going to come down to transition D (defense), it’s going to come down to individual D, help D, coverage, communication, closeouts, rebounding. So we’re looking at the series through that lens. And then offensively, (we’ll take) all the fundamentals on that end of the floor that transcend each coverage and pull it up.”