Monday wrapped the first round's most consequential night of basketball. Oklahoma City swept Phoenix with a 131-122 Game 4 win — the defending champions becoming the first team in NBA history to go 12-0 in first-round series over three consecutive seasons — and are waiting in the West semifinals. Orlando pushed Detroit to the brink of elimination, 94-88, one win from pulling off the postseason's defining upset. Nikola Jokić snapped out of his worst stretch of the series with a playoff triple-double to keep Denver alive at 3-2 — against a Minnesota team playing without Edwards or DiVincenzo, who committed 25 turnovers, and briefly lost Naz Reid to an ankle roll — a team who was in control and is suddenly battling for survival.

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Orlando Magic 94, Detroit Pistons 88

The game traded leads throughout the first half — Orlando up 12 early, Detroit using a 20-5 run to take a 40-30 midpoint advantage, the Magic steadying before the break to lead 54-52 — and then settled into a defensive grind in the second half that produced exactly the kind of game Orlando wins and Detroit doesn't. Bane kissed a three off the glass with 1:16 remaining, as former Grizzlies teammates Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. cheered him on courtside, to make it 92-86. The building exhaled. Detroit made just one field goal in the fourth quarter's final five minutes.

Bane led Orlando with 22 points and five threes in a performance built more on craft than volume — hitting when the Magic needed baskets, moving without the ball, and continuing the remarkable postseason run that has cemented his standing as one of the series' most important players. Wagner had 19 points in three quarters before Mosley pulled him back with the lead in hand. Banchero contributed to the defensive and rebounding effort throughout. Jamal Cain — a name most hadn't thought about since Memphis — was everywhere off the bench, including a one-handed tip-in dunk in the fourth that temporarily cut Detroit's deficit to two and forced Orlando to answer. Carter continued his unheralded excellence at center.

Cunningham led all scorers with his now-routine 27-point performance, doing everything a franchise player can do to keep a series alive and watching his team falter around him anyway. Detroit committed 12 turnovers in the first half, going 0-for-multiple in the opening minutes before finding any offensive rhythm. Stewart had moments of defensive impact but couldn't generate the sustained third-quarter explosion that saved Game 2. Harris added complementary scoring without ever seizing a moment. The Pistons had every chance — they led in the second quarter, they tied it in the third, they pulled within two in the fourth — and still came up six short.

Orlando is 8-1 at home in the playoffs over the past three seasons. They haven't won a playoff series since 2010 and could be the latest 1-seed to lose in the first round (Milwaukee was the previous 1-seed who lost to Miami in 2023). Game 5 is Wednesday in Detroit.

ORL 94 · DET 88

Oklahoma City Thunder 131, Phoenix Suns 122

The Thunder were the best team in this series from Game 1 and the final margin confirmed it. SGA finished with 31 points and 8 assists, Holmgren added 24 on 9-of-16 shooting with 12 rebounds and Hartenstein contributed 18 points and 12 rebounds — 7 on the offensive glass — as Oklahoma City hit 17-of-34 from three and simply outclassed a Phoenix team that never had the depth or health to compete with the defending champions over four games.

The game was closest in the fourth quarter, when Phoenix mounted a real late push — Booker finally finding some space, Green and Brooks getting clean looks — that trimmed what had been a substantial lead to single digits before OKC responded with a decisive run to close it out. But the Thunder had long ago secured the series' outcome in Game 2, when they went up 2-0, and in Game 3, when SGA accepted the Clutch Player of the Year award before tip and dropped 42. Game 4 was about execution and confirmation. OKC's bench — without Jalen Williams for the second straight game — outscored Phoenix's reserves convincingly, with Ajay Mitchell providing the primary ball-handling support alongside SGA.

Phoenix ends the postseason with a 10-game playoff losing streak dating to 2023. Green and Brooks each had 20-plus points in a losing cause. Booker finished as the most capable Suns option all series but was never enough. The Suns' offseason — with Durant's contract, Williams' departure to OKC last summer, and a roster that is clearly built to compete but not to withstand injury variance — will be the most interesting in the West. Oklahoma City moves on and waits. They're 12-0 in the first round over three seasons. Nobody is looking forward to playing them.

OKC 131 · PHX 122

Denver Nuggets 125, Minnesota Timberwolves 113

McDaniels, whose meaningless layup in the final seconds of Game 4 had infuriated Jokić and triggered ejections and fines, picked up two quick fouls and sat at the 9:44 mark of the first quarter. Naz Reid rolled his right ankle late in the third and didn't move well on return. Gordon was out pregame with his calf. Edwards absent. DiVincenzo had surgery Sunday on the torn Achilles.

Jokić, who had been held to an average of 34 percent shooting from the field across Games 2 through 4, simply decided Monday was different. He posted his 23rd career playoff triple-double — 27 points, 16 assists, 12 rebounds, third on the all-time postseason triple-double list behind Magic Johnson and LeBron James — swishing a 29-foot three over Gobert at the halftime buzzer to put Denver ahead 60-51, then overseeing a 37-24 third-quarter demolition that pushed the Nuggets' lead to 22 before Minnesota could regroup. Murray added 24 points. Spencer Jones — starting for Gordon — scored 11 in a six-minute fourth-quarter stretch that included three threes and a breakaway dunk that lit up Ball Arena when the game was already decided.

Minnesota's 25 turnovers were the Timberwolves' undoing. Denver turned those into 35 points. Randle led the Wolves with 27 points and 9 rebounds, the only reliable offensive source in a lineup stripped of its two starting guards. Dosunmu added 18 coming off his 43-point Game 4 eruption. Hyland and Shannon Jr. contributed 15 apiece off the bench in a depth effort that wasn't enough against a Jokić operating at something close to his regular-season standard.

The Nuggets are 3-2 and need to win the next two games. No team in NBA history has overcome a 3-1 deficit in the playoffs, but Denver has done it twice — both in the 2020 bubble. They have Jokić. They have Murray. They're going to Game 6 in Minneapolis.

DEN 125 · MIN 113

Oklahoma City is through. The other seven series are either decided or nearly so. Orlando is one win from the postseason's largest upset. Denver has life. Detroit needs a miracle in their own building. The themes that defined the first round — injury attrition, depth warfare, stars carrying broken rosters — will follow the surviving teams into the second round.

What this first round ultimately delivered was something rarer than any individual performance or series result: genuine unpredictability in both directions. The teams expected to cruise mostly did, but rarely easily. The teams expected to fall mostly have, but rarely without a fight. Cunningham has been extraordinary in a losing cause. Dosunmu had one of the great bench games in playoff history. Wembanyama came back from a concussion in a hostile building and dismantled a lead. Jokić has had his worst playoff shooting stretch in years and still might engineer a comeback. SGA has looked like the best player in the world every single night. And somewhere in all of it, a 45-win team from Orlando is on the verge of knocking out a 60-win team that spent months being considered the East's most dominant outfit.

Stud of the Day: Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets — 27 points, 16 assists, 12 rebounds. His 23rd career playoff triple-double, third on the all-time list. A 29-foot three at the halftime buzzer over Rudy Gobert. A third-quarter takeover that pushed the lead to 22. After his worst three-game shooting stretch of the playoffs, Jokić looked like the player who has won three MVP awards — and he did it without Gordon, against a depleted Minnesota team, in an elimination game at home. That's what separates him.

Dud of the Night: Detroit Pistons (team) — 12 turnovers in the first half, one field goal in the game's final five minutes, and a 1-3 record against Orlando this series despite Cunningham being the best individual performer in nearly every game. The East's 1-seed needs to win Game 5 in their own building Wednesday or they're going home. The pattern that has defined this series — turnovers, defensive breakdowns in the final minutes, no reliable second option — has not changed in four games. There is concern amongst the Pistons fan base that it won’t change in Game 5.