{"id":492733,"date":"2025-05-29T02:45:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T06:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=492733"},"modified":"2025-05-29T02:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T06:50:11","slug":"thunder-eliminate-timberwolves-to-reach-first-nba-finals-since-2012","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/thunder-eliminate-timberwolves-to-reach-first-nba-finals-since-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder eliminate Timberwolves to reach first NBA Finals since 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oklahoma City Thunder defeated Minnesota Timberwolves 124-94 in Game 5 and advanced to the NBA Finals after closing the series 4-1 in the West Conference finals. OKC became the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> youngest roster to reach the finals, as the only younger team to do that was the Portland Trail Blazers in 1976-77 when they won the title.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be able to close out the matchup and to advance to the Finals was very impressive,\u201d shared Oklahoma City manager Mark Daigneault. \u201cMy players stay focused, and that allowed us to dominate and win Game 5.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thunder left no chance to the Wolves since the beginning as they had a 17-point lead after 1<sup>st<\/sup> quarter, where Minnesota scored only 9 points. That was the Timberwolves&#8217; fewest in the organization\u2019s postseason history.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">THE THUNDER ARE BACK IN THE FINALS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2012 \ud83d\udd25<\/p>\n<p>A new Big 3 and a new chance to bring a championship to OKC \u26a1 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Tup51XxzeV\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/Tup51XxzeV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SportsCenter\/status\/1927921637166404018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May 29, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>OKC had a 65-32 lead at halftime as Minnesota had more turnovers (14) than field goals (12) against the Thunder defense that was the best in the NBA in the current campaign.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did our job perfectly on the court and I\u2019m very happy,\u201d claimed Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who finished with 34 points and 8 assists.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EA-XWoIAYrI?si=hFlGRctYUkZC0GbA\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oklahoma City Thunder defeated Minnesota Timberwolves 124-94 in Game 5 and advanced to the NBA Finals after closing the series 4-1 in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":492740,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17159,17837,16786],"news_category":[16706,16715,14084],"gn_keywords":[18338,17840,1067],"acf":{"announce":"Oklahoma City will compete for the title in the NBA.","video":["video"]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/492733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/492733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492737,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/492733\/revisions\/492737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492733"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=492733"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=492733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}