Are The OKC Thunder… EVEN BETTER???

Are The OKC Thunder… EVEN BETTER???

So, my camera got better and so did the Thunder somehow. Let’s talk about it. Well, the Thunder, not this because I mean, this is self-explanatory because what this Thunder team is doing to the rest of the NBA is something that I can’t even really fully wrap my head around. The OKC Thunder, as it stands right now, are 12-1. But it’s not just the fact that they’re 12-1. It’s how they’re doing it and how they are winning these games. Because when you’re thinking about all-time teams and talking about all-time great teams, specifically teams that were all-time great, both offensively and defensively, you have a few choices. You have the Kobe and Shaq Lakers, for example. You have the great Bulls teams of the ’90s, of course, and then you have the Bill Russell Celtics pretty much all the way at the top in terms of defensive dominance over the rest of the NBA. And for the most part, that Bill Russell team or those Bill Russell teams have been considered to be somewhat of like a gold standard in terms of defense in comparison to the rest of the league. Some of those teams, more specifically, I believe it was the 64 Celtics team, boasted a defensive rating that was 10 points better than league average at the time. And that’s sort of been just this like unfathomable, insurmountable feat that nobody else has really even gotten close to since then other than a few outliers. The ‘ 04 Pistons, the ’08 Celtics, the great Spurs teams of the mid 2000s, and that’s really about it. And then you have OKC this season who right now as I’m recording this who have just completely beaten the brakes off the Lakers who now after that game are boasting a defensive rating of 103 yes 103 aka 6 and 12 points better than second place which is the Denver Nuggets at 109.4 four, which basically makes them give or take 11, 12, maybe even 13 points better than the league, which I don’t know exactly because we don’t have like the exact average for league defensive rating, but that is the general range that we are talking about right now. And it’s not even just that because if you’ve been keeping up with the OKC Thunder this season, you’ll know that they are doing this. I had a tweet about this earlier here. Hold on, let me pull this up. So Jaylen Williams JDub has not played the entire season because he got uh the surgery off seasonason for his wrist injury that he was dealing with during the uh playoff run. So he hasn’t played at all. He’s one of their best defenders. He’s on his best day, arguably their best defender, but that’s another conversation for another day. Lud Dort has missed five games with injury. Isaiah Joe has missed five games. Chad Homegrren has missed four games. Alex Caruso has missed four games. Aaron Wiggins has missed three games. And Case Wallace has missed one game. Are we fully uh understanding what is like actually happening here? They’re putting together such a historic defense and they’re doing it while not having their main rotation of guys on the floor for half of the game so far. And they’re still blitzing everybody else. And I think that would already be scary enough on its own, but then you take into consideration the fact that it doesn’t seem like the overall like lack of shotmaking that has been a concern for the last couple seasons around Shay has really been that noticeable because of how great the defense is. So when the defense is just all the way up here, if the offense is down here, well then the defense is still up here. So that covers for anything that is going wrong with the offense, you know, that that is down here. It it doesn’t make any sense what I am witnessing right now. And even then, speaking of the offense, even then, they’re not even a bad offensive team. They’re sixth in offense, but their defense is obviously just far and away, not even close best in the league. And we are probably going to be having some real conversations farther into the season about where this defense ranks all time. And from what I can tell watching the games, it doesn’t even seem like it’s that much of a difference from last year overall. I think that the overall continuity of this team, you know, now carrying over pretty much the exact same roster from last year to this year. Like it seems like everybody kind of just knows what their role is, what to do, where to rotate. The rotations have been to me the most impressive thing about this defense because every time OKC plays an elite guard or elite player, anything along those lines, elite team, they played the Lakers and Warriors back to back who obviously you you can say whatever you want about this team right here. But the Lakers have been pretty good to start the season and I feel like a lot of people didn’t really expect the game to go the way that it did. But when you have this defense that is just on a string, and we’ve heard that term a lot when describing this team specifically, I don’t think it really even matters who has been out there as long as the overall just principles are in place because like even with some lineups with guys that are good defenders but not, you know, like all the way up here like a Alex Caruso or a Lud Door or a Jayla Williams, you have lineups with say Isaiah Joe for example that are still putting up these crazy defensive metrics. And that, of course, that’s no disrespect to Isaiah Joe. It just hasn’t really seemed like it’s mattered who’s on the floor. No matter what, the driving lanes are going to be closed off. The passing lanes are going to be narrow. And overall, it’s just been insane. The OKC Thunder, as of right now, through 13 games, have only allowed over 110 points three times. Two of those times being the back-to-back double overtime games at the start of the season. The third time being their only loss of the season to the Portland Trailblazers in which they gave up 121. That’s it. Every other game is just 194 101 108 106 107 101 100 102 and with the Lakers 92. But the defense is of course only half the game which brings us to the offense. And with the amount of players being out, that has been led largely by Shay Gil’s Alexander, who is putting together another just otherworldly regular season. By the looks of it, this dude is extending his streak of 20 plus point games, which I believe is at 85 now at the time of this recording. Only Wilt Chamberlain has had a longer streak than that. So far this season, he has scored 30 or more points in all but two games. One of those games being against the Dallas Mavericks and the other one being against the Golden State Warriors in which he didn’t score 30 because he didn’t play in the fourth quarter. But that’s not even really a reasoning I feel like because Shay Gilas Alexander has already sat out seven fourth quarters in the first 13 games. And I was talking about this with Low earlier. This team has a lot of striking similarities with the 1516 Warriors already. I I I I see it and I know what you’re saying. Oh, how could how could this team be? Yeah. Yeah. We’re talking about a team that won 68 games last year, the 15 Warriors 167, went on to win the title in a series that a lot of people feel would have went the other way had players not gotten injured. And now we have Shay Gildas Alexander doing what he’s doing and of course sitting out the fourth quarters, which obviously reminds you a bunch of Stephen Curry that season. Now, I already know what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah. I I I know that that playoff run was not really as convincing as we thought it would be considering how well they were playing in the regular season last year, but if this is how they’re playing this year, I don’t actually see any situation where a team is even going to be competitive with them because that’s how convincingly they are winning a lot of these games. They beat the Rockets double overtime on opening night. They beat the Lakers by 30, had a 30-point lead in the second quarter, and then it’s uh to to be honest, it’s it’s a bunch of other teams that they should be beating, but not like that. That is crazy. So, we will see as their schedule kind of gets tougher as the season goes on, how they will actually consistently perform against those teams. But as of right now, this is looking insane. You have Shay averaging 33 points again, shooting 52% from the field again, 36% from three again on even more attempts, six attempts this season. You have Chad Homegrren fully back now who has had a full off seasonason to kind of recover fully from the injury last year. He has looked fantastic as always, especially as arguably probably the second best rim protector in the league behind WBY. Another factor of this defense, you have AJ Mitchell, who has sort of taken on the role of of JDub, I guess, because he has been putting together a fantastic start to the year, putting up 17 points a game, and kind of making up for that scoring void that is being left by JDub not being out there, which I am pretty interested to see what kind of happens to his minutes as Jdub starts to get worked back into the rotation, you know, within the next few weeks or whatever, because he has been playing incredible like It’s It’s insane. You have my guy Kay Wallace. And yes, he’s my guy because I figured out recently that we are actually birthday twins. We were both born on November 7th. So, he’s my guy who’s been picking up right where he left off. 38% from three, almost two and a half steals a game. I It’s just, you know, of course you have Alex Caruso doing what he does. Isaiah Hardenstein being the great rebounder, great passer that we know him to be. It’s actually kind of scary what has happened with this team now that you have actually given them continuity. But again, is it really even continuity because they haven’t had their main guys on the floor for more than five games, bro? And my bad if this video is kind of all over the place. I just watched the Thunder Lakers game and I just needed to get my thoughts out. I I I didn’t want to sleep on this one and then wake up and be all tired. I don’t want to do this. But yeah, th this is this is bad. Me personally, seeing how my guy Steph looked against this defense, him not being able to shed Kase and Wallace for the life of him or asking for a pick and seeing Alex Caruso walking up or Sheay or when all else fails when he was actually able to get, you know, by Kase Wallace by I don’t know backline help of of Jay Will, Jaylen Williams, then he’s running into Chad Homegrren at the rim. like it’s just what are you supposed to do? Like what is that? So yeah, early into the season, but man, th this is already this is bad. I’ll probably have a lot more to say about this team once we have a way bigger sample size. Say, I don’t know, 30 35 games. But with all that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Subscribe if you’re new. Hit the bell to be notified when I upload. Comment down below what you want to see next. And as always, I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Talking about the OKC Thunder’s start to the season, and what it could mean moving forward. If you guys enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the like button and slap the sub button with your nose (also the bell).

2025 Pacers Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuzyzO-WlQw

Klay Thompson Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zkamb8Xkoc

Warriors Redemption Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ6IYfW8DX0

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