Thunder rolled

 I suppose now is as good a time as any to bring up that basketball mercy rule.

No, not for high schools. For the NBA.

The high school mercy rule, that's already been done, at least in Indiana. The IHSAA just enacted one for this season, ruling that if a team is leading by 35 points or more after halftime, the game will be played with a running clock.

And the NBA?

Well, somewhere in Oklahoma City this morning, someone undoubtedly just said this: "Thirty-five points? Golly, if only we could have gotten that close!"

Don't know if you saw this or not, since it's December 3 and it's the NBA and no one much pays attention to the NBA until, like, April. But last night the Oklahoma City Thunder did something no NBA team has ever before done. 

They lost an official NBA game by 73 points.

The final was Memphis 152, Oklahoma City 79, a butt-whipping of not only epic but historic proportions. It, the largest margin of victory in NBA history, and it illustrates that not everyone in the league has a rent-a-star.

Oklahoma City has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who's averaging a team-high 21.2 points per game, but he was out with a concussion and three other key players were out as well. Of course, Memphis was playing without its star, Ja Morant, so that sort of evened the scales.

Well, OK. So you can't really use the term "evened the scales" when you're talking about a 73-point blowout.

It was so lopsided nine Memphis players scored in double digits -- including former IPFW standout Jon Konchar, who got meaningful minutes off the bench (26) and responded with a 17-point night in which he hit 7-of-8 shots. His steal and dunk with 3:02 left put the Griz up 145-67 and established a franchise record for points in a game.

Memphis shot 62.5 percent, made 19-of-36 threes and outrebounded the Thunder 53-26. The Griz led by 15 after a quarter, by 36 at halftime and by 51 at the end of three quarters.

The most amazing stat of all?

They aren't the Phoenix Suns or the Golden State Warriors, exactly. Going into last night, the Grizzlies were a barely-.500 team (11-10) and stood fifth in the Western Conference, seven games adrift of the Suns.

Running clock, anyone?