The Oklahoma City Thunder and Golden State Warriors entered the season tied for the most nationally-televised games, so it’s not a surprise that both teams will begin 2026 with a marquee affair. The Warriors will host the Thunder at 10 p.m. ET in what could be a first-round preview, given that Oklahoma City currently holds the West’s first seed and Golden State the eighth seed.
The Thunder will once again be thin at center, with Isaiah Hartenstein (heel) now set to miss his 11th game out of his team’s last 16 and Jaylin Williams set to miss his ninth straight. Their injury list is short compared to that of the Warriors: Stephen Curry (ankle), Jimmy Butler (illness), and Draymond Green (rest) will all sit, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
Oklahoma City is a 13.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-675 Moneyline), with the point total set to 226.5. Golden State is +490 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s Amazon Prime showdown and offer my prediction.
Oklahoma City Thunder at Golden State Warriors preview, prediction
Not long ago, the sky was falling for the Thunder, who had lost three games in the span of two weeks to the San Antonio Spurs. Since then, though, Oklahoma City has gotten back to its traditional ways, blowing out the Philadelphia 76ers, Atlanta Hawks, and Portland Trail Blazers in rapid succession, and Jalen Williams is trending upwards after a slow start to the season. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander continues to put up MVP-level production in just three quarters, and Chet Holmgren is coming off of a two-steal, six-block performance. Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren are favored to win MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, respectively, and Mark Daigneault has the third-shortest odds to win Coach of the Year.
The Warriors are also hot, having won five of their last six games, though they’ve had a fairly easy schedule over that span. Steve Kerr’s decision to settle on the Curry-Butler-Green-Moses Moody-Quinten Post starting lineup appears to have worked, as Golden State has a 5-3 record and a plus-4.8 net rating across that span, but with Curry, Butler, and Green all sitting, the Warriors’ starting lineup will look very different tonight. There have been three games this season that each of the three stars has missed; Will Richard has started each of the three and Jonathan Kuminga two, but Richard has struggled as of late and Kuminga has fallen out of the rotation entirely.
Thunder at Warriors pick, best bet
Richard could start alongside Brandin Podziemski, Buddy Hield, Moody, and Post, but that would be an extremely small lineup, and similar lineups (Hield-Richard-Podziemski-Moody-Trayce Jackson-Davis and Hield-Moody-Podziemski-Post-Pat Spencer) have been decimated by 47.7 and 61.8 points per 100 possessions, respectively, in eight minutes each. Regardless, whatever lineup combination Golden State starts will likely get out-rebounded, given that it has already been poor on the glass even with its three stars, who all happen to rank among the better pound-for-pound rebounders in the league. In the three games that the Warriors have played without any of their stars, they’ve been out-rebounded by six, out-scored by 4.6 points per game, and lost the turnover battle by 14.
The latter stat could be a particularly major issue against the Thunder, who rank second in the league in turnovers per game, steals per game and opponent points off of turnovers while turning the turnovers they force into the most points, especially since Golden State has been turnover-prone even with its starting lineup of choice. As for rebounding, the Warriors could be fine, given that Oklahoma City ranks just 19th in total rebounding percentage over the last 15 games and has been 5.8 percentage points worse in that stat without Hartenstein on the floor, but the Thunder have had such great rim protection, with or without Hartenstein, that Golden State’s simply not getting beaten too badly on the boards won’t be nearly sufficient.
To have any sort of chance of pulling off the upset, the Warriors will have to shoot the lights out, and while the spacing might be a little better without Green and Butler, who are relative non-shooters, they’ll surely miss Curry, who unsurprisingly leads the league in the NBA’s new off-ball perimeter gravity metric by a margin equal to that between Gilgeous-Alexander in second and Shaedon Sharpe in 28th. Hield, meanwhile, is the only other Golden State player who ranks in the top 50 in off-ball perimeter gravity, and Podziemski is the only other player who ranks in the top 150 in on-ball perimeter gravity (Curry ranks fifth). As is, Oklahoma City gives up a low average shot quality, conceding a below-average number of wide-open threes and among the fewest at the rim, and now the Warriors will be without two of their top three players by wide-open three-point attempts and percentage on such shots.
Arguably, the question isn’t whether the Thunder can win by 14-plus points (they beat Golden State by 24 points with each member of the Warriors’ core healthy in November and beat it by 12 points with only Curry missing in early December), but whether they can win the first half by 14-plus points. After all, they did so in each of the teams’ earlier games and have a league-best plus-16.2 net rating in the first half. At +196, it’s certainly worth a flyer.
