On April 10, 2021, the Runners' penultimate game of the regular season of the season began in Oklahoma City.

The Thunder have been in a high-pitched and low-pitched situation this season, finishing in the top four in the West in the middle of the season, only trailing the Runners and Lakers, but with the start of the All-Star Game and the subsequent efforts of the teams, the Thunder are in a lot of trouble.

The lack of flexibility in his clever coaching style, coupled with the fact that he is too focused on the role of data, has put his position in jeopardy after the Thunder's performance has declined.

However, the Thunder had a good record before, so although they fell into a long losing streak after the All-Star break, they finally held on to the top eight spots in the West.

Since the Thunder had two wins ahead of the Spurs and Suns, who were eighth and ninth in the West, before this game, this home game against the Runners was actually of little significance, as the Thunder had already locked up the seventh spot in the West ahead of schedule, and they would meet the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.

However, the Thunder team coached by Gao Ming still played extremely aggressively in this game against the Runners, especially their point guard Paul West.

Paul has always been unwilling to be suppressed by Turgon's popularity, and he is bent on competing with Turgun again, but unfortunately Turgun is resting in this game.

Despite losing a rival, Paul West still has a strong desire to attack.

Now there is no one on the team who can suppress Paul West, and Gao Ming is willing to let Paul show his strength, so Paul West cut the first triple-double in his life in this game, and it was a big triple-double.

With 39 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists, the numbers are impressive for any era, and Paul West showed his offensive prowess and defensive prowess against the Runners.

However, the result of the game was somewhat unexpected for the Thunder team, because it was still the Runners who won.

The Runners weren't able to limit Paul West's play, but they allowed the Thunder to score just 92 points in the game.

The entire Thunder team shot just over 30 percent of the game from the field.

Wang Lei's team has formed a good defensive team tacit understanding after a period of run-in after the All-Star Game, and the rotation speed of the players in defense has been greatly improved, especially for the interior defense, the layered defensive strategy makes the Thunder team's interior have no chance to play in this game, and only Paul West relies on the speed advantage to rush rebounds again and again to ensure that the Thunder team does not completely collapse.

With this win, the Runners have won 65 games, and they will only have one home game against the Lakers, and then their regular season will be over.

The Runners, who returned to Sasa City, welcomed the Lakers after a day of rest in what was the third meeting between the two teams this season.

For the Lakers, they don't take this game very seriously, because they have no hope of catching up with the Runners at this point, and with the playoffs just around the corner, the Lakers will have to be fully prepared to face the impactful up-and-coming Thunder.

The Runners, on the other hand, wanted to use the opportunity of the last regular season game to run in the lineup again, and the most important thing was the defense on the inside, after all, they were indeed at a relative disadvantage on the inside.

The intensity of the playoffs is beyond the imagination of young players, although the Runners have played a few similar games in the regular season, such as the Bulls in the game against the Bulls, and the Bulls showed the Runners what a playoff-level confrontation is.

Now Wang Lei is most worried about the young players in the team who can't withstand the difficulties in the playoffs, which is actually a common problem of young players, they are good at playing tailwind, good at playing fast offense and suppressing the ball, but when they encounter difficulties, young players are often prone to collapse.

In the final game against the Lakers, the Runners originally wanted to have a playoff preview with their opponents, but it was clear that the head coach of the Lakers, Van Lauderway, was a seemingly passionate, but extremely cautious guy in private, and he hid most of the main players in this regular season finale, starting the game with Charles Mobley, a point guard who was looking for game fitness after recovering from injury.

Mobley is an extremely irascible player, and in a feuding game between the Lakers and Celtics after the All-Star Game, Charles Mobley was attacked by the Celtics' Kevin Johnson, nicknamed "The Butcher".

Kevin Johnson's black elbow broke Mobley's nose directly, which made the Lakers extremely angry, and the two sides almost caused a large-scale group fight.

Van Lauderway eventually relied on his authority to stabilize the team's form.

Mobley, who wore a mask, seemed extremely restrained in this match, and he played a normal game calmly, as if the injury had made him change his bad temper.

In fact, Mobley is so low-key because he doesn't want to miss the playoffs again, his irrational behavior almost buried the entire Lakers last season, which once made Mobley a great infamy, but this season Mobley doesn't want to be a spectator anymore, he hopes to go to the end with the team.

One side wants to play more intensely to hone the lineup, while the other side is dead or alive, that is, to maintain a normal rhythm of the game.

So this game was a bit dull from the beginning, and Wang Lei also put away his plan to continue to run in the lineup, began to replace the starters, and exercised the team's rotation players.

Wang Lei knows that many games in the playoffs need to play role players, because in the playoffs, both sides of the game will pay great attention to each other's core players, and this is the time to compete for the depth of the bench and the level of role players on both sides.

If a role player can play as it should or even go beyond the norm, it will not only help the team to a large extent, but also free up the team's core players, so many times in the playoffs, it is the role players who determine the course of the game.

In such an atmosphere, the Runners comfortably defeated the game-matching Lakers 110-101 to complete the third kill of the season, but the Lakers obviously don't care much about this, and all their attention is now focused on the upcoming playoffs.