Which team suffered the biggest home court defeat in NBA history?
Which team suffered the biggest home-court defeat in NBA history? The NBA regular season is a long ride, it is not a race, it is a marathon. During that ride teams and players have their ups and downs which is absolutely understandable. Unfortunately, sometimes their low point is extremely low, even historically low. What makes it even worse is when that happens in front of the home crowd.
One of those nights happened on May 1st, 2021 when the Oklahoma City Thunder hosted the Indiana Pacers.
The Thunder were sitting on a horrific 13th place in the Western Conference with a 21-43 record with no chances to make it to the playoffs. On the other side, the Pacers were at the ninth spot in the East with a 30-33 record, hoping to avoid the Play-in tournament and make it to the playoffs.
So the Pacers were expectedly more motivated than their opponent and easily the better team but what was about to happen went a little too far.
Despite missing six players due to injury the Pacers absolutely crushed the Thunder by 57 point difference, 152-95. The 57-point margin made it the largest home loss in NBA history. The previous record for a road team was held by the Boston Celtics, who beat the Chicago Bulls by 56 points in 2018 (133-77).
That was the first game back for Domantas Sabonis after missing six consecutive contests. The All-Star forward got the Pacers’ offense off to a fast start and they never really cooled off.
They led 82-46 at halftime, which marked the second-biggest halftime lead in Pacers franchise history and their highest-scoring first half of the season, shooting 70 percent from the field.
With 4:12 remaining in the fourth quarter, Oshae Brissett put the score at 149-82 to give the Pacers a 67-point lead – the biggest lead in an NBA game in 25 years.
The Pacers set NBA franchise records for points scored and 3-pointers made (21).
They also became the first team to ever score 150 points and concede less than 100 since 1993 when the Sacramento Kings beat the Philadelphia 76ers 154-98.
Sabonis tallied 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, 19 rebounds, and 14 assists in 30 minutes of action, securing his seventh triple-double of the season before halftime and sitting out the entire fourth quarter. He joined Russell Westbrook (twice) and Nikola Jokic as just the third player to record a halftime triple-double in the play-by-play era (1997-98) and is the only player to have a 20-point triple-double at halftime.
Doug McDermott matched his career-high with 31 points on 11-of-14 shooting, going 6-for-8 from 3-point range, while Caris LeVert added 25 points and six assists in 27 minutes.
The Pacers topped 40 points in each of the first three quarters, outscoring the Thunder by 13, 23, and 20, in those periods.
Indiana shot a season-high 65.5 percent from the field, narrowly missing out on the best field-goal percentage in franchise history (.667 in a win at Minnesota on Oct. 24, 2017). The Thunder, meanwhile, shot just 34.2 percent, the lowest field-goal percentage by a Pacers opponent of the season.
The best player on the losing team was Moses Brown with 18 points.
Pacers victory was the 12th largest in a regular-season game in the history of the NBA. All of the 11 games with larger margins were won by the home team.
The largest win ever was by a 68-point margin when the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Miami Heat with 148-80 in the 1991-92 season.
