Kevin Durant becomes NBA's youngest scoring champ

OKLAHOMA CITY – Kevin Durant scored 31 points to finish the season as the youngest scoring champion in NBA history, and the Oklahoma City Thunder survived a sloppy second half to head into the postseason with a 114-105 win Wednesday night against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Oklahoma City let most of a 27-point lead dwindle away before closing out its 50th win of the season. The Thunder will meet the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.

Rudy Gay scored 25 points and Zach Randolph had 21 points and 11 rebounds for his 57th double-double of the season as the Grizzlies lost for the ninth time in their final 11 games.

Durant had the scoring title all but locked up after a late-season surge that included three 40-point games in April. It became a certainty when Cleveland decided to rest reigning MVP LeBron James, the only player with even an outside shot at catching Durant.

The 21-year-old finished with an average of 30.1 points, 0.4 ahead of James, and supplanted 22-year-old Max Zaslofsky of the 1947-48 Chicago Stags as the youngest scoring champ in NBA history.

Oklahoma City strayed from the league-wide trend of resting stars, even with nothing to gain but the momentum lost while dropping four of their previous five games. James, the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, Miami's Dwyane Wade and Boston's "Big Three" of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce all took to the bench to finish the season. Even San Antonio — which had room to gain in the West standings — played without Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili.

Durant helped the Thunder put on a show in front of their 28th sellout crowd of the season at the Ford Center — at least for a half.

Oklahoma City used a 17-4 run to extend its lead to 19 on James Harden's 3-pointer early in the second quarter and then tacked on a string of seven straight points — including Durant's right-handed dunk on a fast break — to go up 54-32 with 4:42 left before halftime.

Serge Ibaka piled up four blocks in the second quarter and also had a two-handed jam on a fast break, and Durant added a two-handed slam off an alley-oop that pushed the edge to 25 with 1:15 to go in the first half.

The teams that started the season as the two youngest squads in the NBA ended up with the largest improvement from last year. Oklahoma City won 27 games more than last season and made it to the playoffs for the first time in five years. Memphis improved by 16 victories but fell just short of finishing at .500