They have a ton of guys who can shoot, but no shooters, if that makes any sense

The Thunder are #3 in man games lost in the entire league.

Every other team in the top 5 of man games lost is currently sitting outside of a playoff spot.

They sit 18th, 21st, 22nd and 29th.

The Thunder sit in 1st.

With the gap between them and #2 in the West being the same as the gap between #2 and #8.

Given their injuries, they are overachieving.

While you bringing up Denver as a comparison makes sense, the Nuggets are worse at 11-9 in the same timeframe, and both teams are 7-3 in their L10.

The Nuggets doing that well is more impressive considering OKC still has the MVP on the court, while Jokic has been out since he was hurt on ¹²⁄₂₉.

Which is crazy to see given their start. I guess that’s why SGA is number 1 in the mvp race cuz without him thunder fall off a cliff

I want to believe what you’re saying is true, but it seems like every time I watch one of their games, their offense goes off and their whole bench suddenly can’t miss a 3.

We shoot well, we win. We dont, we lose by 2. Thats been the theme. We have 2 blowout losses. The rest have been close games. So yea, it really is as simple as being able to hit an open shot.

WHICH WE CANNOT DO HALF THE TIME. Had an argument with a poster in our sub when they said we could win when we get outrebounded. Yea? When we make 23 3s. But if we made 10 3s like usual, that game would have been a hellava lot closer. Or a loss.

Only Shai is a consistent offensive threat. Chet is getting there, but he isnt consistent. JDub has regressed thanks to his wrist. He was consistent last regular season. Ajay is in and out of the lineup and is our only other player who has a chance of being consistent.

Hart at least gives us a reliable 12 points and his passing gives other guys open layups. He really is our 3rd most valuable player (after SGA and Chet).

We’ve had more missed games from starters than the Pacers. Add in on top of that Dub not being 100% when he is back so that when our streaky shooters arent hitting, it destroys our pacing.

I think it’ll sort itself out with time and health, but anyone who thinks this is a representative sample of this roster is mistaken.

Yeah, I mean we got big dogged by the spurs a few times. And now we are losing games without four of our six best players. I take pretty much nothing from the last two games other than that our rotation guys are inconsistent three-point shooters, which we already knew. It just typically doesn’t matter.

Thinking that this has anything to do with Chris Finch is some TikTok level thinking. Maybe it had an effect in that game specifically – but that was mostly because Minnesota shot 47 free throws in that game.

They also don’t have like 4 rotational in the lineup with one being an all-star but let’s all just ignore that.

We have a bunch of 38-40% 3pt shooters, who have collectively forgotten how to shoot. It’s fine when we are at full health, we can still win without 3’s then, but when we are heavily injured and missing 3’s? It devolves into “we need Shai to put up 50 while double and triple teamed”

You mean to tell me you dont think a coach getting upset at refs altered the way the league now officiates one specific team?

You’ve nailed it. IHart was the key piece of the early season run. He hurt his calf and went out for a bit but when he returned was playing at half capacity. Then he reinjured the calf. Honestly hope he sits until March because he’s needed at full capacity come playoffs.

This assumes we don’t sustain further injury and/or completely collapse before then.

I don’t have the stats but watching OKC games has felt different for a while now. OKC get away with way less fouls than they used to and have had to change their aggression imo.

Who put me in a time machine and sent me back ten years? This comment reads exactly like the flaw in all those OKC teams post Harden trade.

It’s been a weak point of this team for a couple years that Dub, occasionally wiggs and then Ajay helped alleviate. Now with 2 of them out and one slumping it’s literally just SGA with some streaky shooters and an opportunistic Chet.

I think the problem with their offense is they have like 8 3&D players. Caruso, Joe, Wiggins, Dort, Wallace and Mitchell are all such similar archetypes

I think their offence has largely been at a similar level to last year, with SGA taking another step up mitigating some of Jdub’s absence, but their defence has definitely taken a drop off. Their offence was always kinda meh, but they just made up for it by running like hell off of misses and turnovers but they’re just not getting them anymore.

Big part of that is IHart being missing means Chet can’t be as switchy as he’d like to be and they can’t utilise the Caruso at center lineups that they did so well with last year because teams have done a 180 on their approach to offensive rebounding and those lineups give up too many second chance points. Dort has also fallen off a cliff on both ends, the shooting is even more inconsistent and his defence is kinda fine instead of elite. I do think Jdub’s importance on defence was underestimated (imo he’s actually better than Dort) because he literally switches 1-5 and defends basically every position to an extremely high level and that’s what enables Dort/Wallace/Chet/SGA to be more aggressive when they’re going for deflections & blocks, and on top of that, when Chet is the center, Jdub was usually their next best weak side helper/rotator and you really see how badly OKC get punished on the glass or at the rim whenever teams can pull Chet out of the paint defensively

Hilarious that people were calling that supporting cast a “super team” earlier in the year

Yeah, he needs Adam Silver back

This is why we need dub. Getting him back in the shape during the season is going to cause some short-term bumps. Not only that, in the average regular season game, there is a slight drop in efficiency in any possession where SGA is not the primary ball handler. but unequivocally, we need other creators in the playoffs.

Goes without saying that we also need Hartenstein, Caruso, and Ajay back. That’s four of our six best players.

Funny how different the league feels now that OKC aren’t on pace to beat the 2016 warriors record and the clippers aren’t looking like they’re gifting them a top draft pick anymore.

Reminds me of when the pelicans thought the lakers were going to give them a chance at a pick swap for Wemby and then the lakers made it to the conference finals lol

Chris Finch saved basketball

Thank you for this, finally someone else talks about this.

People keep saying this but it makes no sense.

No team is gonna let their player foul out every game.

Every single player adjusts their play based on how much foul trouble they’re in.

The issue is they were not calling fouls that they should have.

If they started calling those, that doesn’t magically mean that OKc gonna skyrocket to 30000 fouls a game.

They adjust.

FTs that refs have given Luka last 4 games: 12, 15, 10, 12

Same with the 33-1 without jalen. The one saying that okc cant reach the 73-9. Its peak r/NBA for some reason.

while we are dogshit, this isn’t a post about us so idk why you’re bringing that energy in here

so their whistle actually improved

That’s not how that works. Teams adjust to the whistle they expect. There are fewer fouls called now than in the 80s; that doesn’t mean that the whistle is more lax now. Quite the opposite, but the number of fouls called is dependent on things like how good players and coaches are at knowing when to foul, how good players are at FTs, etc.

Denver is missing Jokic and only has one fewer win than OKC during this stretch. AG was out for a bit, too. OKC lacks shooting, there are gaps on offense for sure. The rabid defense can’t always make up for it when the whistle changes.

If Tyronn Lue can get the clippers to scrape to a playoff spot after their terrible start. Hes probably gonna get it.

Got like 7 or 8 actual NBA level guys healthy at the moment lmao. Dieng/Barnhizer getting minutes every night should be an indication of what this team is going through injury wise.

OKC had the easiest early schedule and the hardest later schedule or something like that.

Yeah low-key his addition to that roster is super under-rated. He was playing awesome in NY and I was surprised when they let him walk (I get it, contract, aprons, etc.) and knew the Thunder got a good one. iHart is on that Zubac trajectory.

It’s injuries. Both Jaylin and Jalen Williams, iHart, Ajay Mitchell, Cason, Dort, Wiggins, and Caruso have missed time. Most of them have missed multiple games

Theres been regression imo

Jdub is obviously worse this year which could be him dealing with his injury recovery but he hasn’t looked like a 2nd option at all.

Lu Dort is shooting 40/34/83 splits averaging 8.⁷⁄₃.⁸⁄₁.1 which are the worst numbers since he was a rookie.

Caruso is also having his worst shooting season since a rookie.

This team was already shaky offensively last year and thats 3 major downgrades. Thats enough to put them in major risk of playoff defeat against all opponents.

Defense is great but it wont be enough if an opponent gets hot in the playoffs. They straight up dont have the firepower to overcome that this year

Faced tougher teams, bad 3 pt shooting.

I know people will bring up them winning the title last season despite the bad shooting but they also didn’t face a team that could truly exploit that advantage until the finals

https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2025.html

All the great 3 pt shooting teams were in the East. Houston was the only top 6 team in 3p% from the West but they were also last in volume. The best 3 pt shooting team the Thunder faced was 7th in both efficiency and volume (Wolves). That’s one of the reasons Indiana almost won the finals despite the talent level on paper being notably inferior to the Thunder. OKC was also 6th in both 3p volume and efficiency in the regular season, something they could not have won 69 games without.

Terrible rebounding with no IHart, AJ injured and out in 4 of the loses, JDub still not 100% shooting and just general bricking of 3s. JWill was also out quite a bit too.

Five injured rotation players (plus the two guys out for the whole season that were expected to get solid minutes) including our 2nd-4th best ballhandlers, as well as others playing through stuff. When Shai is off the floor we don’t have anyone to run the offense.

We’ve had to play our 13th, 14th, and 15th guys meaningful minutes the last several games and we’re starting guys like Joe and playing Kenrich Williams 30 minutes when they routinely get healthy DNPs when healthy and barely played in the playoffs last year. (Though Kenny has been good in this stretch).

Except the fact that this isn’t a coincidence. There’s a logical explanation for it and it doesn’t deal with the idiotic and whiney protest of that coach.

Like Klay and the toaster

Don’t forget Ajay Mitchell who is injured now as well. He’s currently one of our main scorers too.

Don’t talk about facts to people who just like to whine. It’s useless.

IMO SGA’s health is more important. Especially when you’ve got a 5 game lead for the 1 seed. He looks pretty beat up as it is.

they think okc slump is related to the fact that chris finch outburst to the refs changed the potential calls okc gets. but jb bickerstaff had a similar one last year and okc won in 7 so i doubt theirs a correlation

The narrative is that the refs stopped favoring OKC with the whistle after that situation because he shined such a bright light on how biased they were in favor of OKC when it came to calling fouls

Yeah, we’re doing just fine considering the streaky shooting and brutal injury stretch. As long as we can hold onto the top seed nothing else really matters during the season. I just hope JDub gets back in time to actually catch a proper rhythm before the playoffs come around. He was just starting to look like himself as that hamstring hit.

We’ve not seen a single game of full strength in rhythm OKC yet this season, only 5 games played with the actual starters and Dub was nowhere near his peak in those early games back.

If we can roll into the playoffs with an actually healthy roster that’s in rhythm we will be a very scary playoff opponent for anyone, Nuggets and Spurs included.

Fans are sticking their heads in the sand if they think otherwise.