This is EXACTLY what the Thunder NEEDED…

This is EXACTLY what the Thunder NEEDED…

This is exactly what the Thunder needed, the deep threat. Isaiah Joe playing at the top of his game and pinning threes on pace with the league’s premier shooters. We’ve come to expect this of Joe based on his last three years with the squad, shooting north of 40% from three-point land in each of those campaigns. But it wasn’t as much of a necessity in years past. We’ll get into why this matters so much for an OKC team that has struggled to knock down the three ball consistently to open up this year. We’re going to get into Joe’s performances of the early season and we’re going to get into one key thing that we have to keep an eye on as OKC fans moving deeper into this season because it is a key reason why we won the NBA title last year and is not boating so well for this early season. This is Gabriel Eversell with Thunder Digest. Today we’re going to discuss AJ Joe’s early season performances, how he’s helped propel the Thunder to the top of the Western Conference. And I’m super excited to break down today’s video. Before we get into it though, 68% of you guys watching not subscribed to the channel. Thunder won a franchise record 68 games last year, their first championship of franchise history, but all of that is in the past. We’re focused on the now and me and Ryan are focused on keeping you guys up to date with all things Thunder basketball all in one place. So, make sure you sub up so we can do that for you guys. We’re trying to hit 8K by all-star break. And without any further ado, we’re going to break down the great opening season performance of Isaiah Joe, a guy who was a streaky postseason shooter last year. His overall numbers look good. So, we were wondering how he was going to bounce back as fans, and he has responded very well in the early season. This guy has been the second uh leading percentage-wise on our team in three-pointers. He’s leading our team in attempts, and he is the reason that we have moved out of the 29th spot that we held at the beginning of the year in three-point shooting. This is a team that was struggling to hit the three ball, struggling with the consistency of hitting the three ball, and this guy has come in and really helped to stabilize that. Let’s break it down. So, this is Isaiah Joe’s shot chart to begin the season. you might be seeing that 43% overall and be like, well, that’s a little bit subpar right there. But then you take a look that out of his 93 overall total shots, 74 of them have come from behind the ark as opposed to 19 within it. So, him hitting that uh percentage does not look so bad. Shooting 40.5% from the three-point line does not look so bad for his first nine games this season. Joe has provided three-point shooting from a plethora of spots. When you take a look at his shot chart, the only place he hasn’t hit from, ironically, is the top of the key, but he’s hit from the both corners, both wings. He’s able to uh take the one dribble pull up into that mid-range, and he’s able to finish at the basket. So, this guy doing a lot uh early on and expanding his game and just staying consistent with that three-point shot that we have come to expect from this guy in his previous three years here. So, Isaiah Joe off to a good start this year. But when we take a look at specifically what he’s been doing in each of these games, it gets a little bit even better than what it was because this guy’s hit three or more three-pointers in six of the nine games that he has played so far. And he’s hitting a game with five, a game with six. So, he’s had some very hot games in which he’s been able to uh put points on the board quickly as he’s coming off of the bench in these spurts to hit these shots and he’s able to really stretch the floor for other guys when he’s out there. Um, taking a look at what he’s done in his career so far though, this is something we have come to expect from Isaiah Joe. I want to emphasize this. In his, uh, three previous years here, he shot 40.9%, 41.6%, last year, 41.2% and now at that 40 1.5%. So, this actually would be statistically his worst shooting year here. But then you take a look at the attempts that he’s taking and how we’ve given him the ability and the space to really expand upon his game. you’re seeing uh from four and a half uh from 5 and 1/2 threes down to four and a half threes the next year uh as his uh playing time got cut down a little bit and then you’re seeing the 6.3 three-pointers and now we’re up to north of eight attempts this year and he’s still holding that same consistency as a shooter and he’s now over 10 field goal attempts in general for the first time in his career. We’re giving this guy a little bit more freedom in the offense and he is not cutting down on how efficient he’s been at all. So, this is a very positive thing to see going forward with a team that’s, you know, struggled from early season injuries and a team that had question marks shooting the ball in the early season and the playoffs. This is very, very encouraging for us to see as fans. Continuing on with how we expect this out of Isaiah Joe, this guy has been knocking down threes. I mean, he was drafted for the Sixers and even there he was knocking down threes and we’ve given him the platform to do that at an expanded rate. This guy is six in his draft class of 2020 uh in three-pointers made. He was a 49th overall pick. So, great value there. already hit 584 threes in his career. And the only guys he sits behind are guys who are all-star caliber players. You’re seeing LaMelo Ball, Tyresese Hallebertton, Ant Edwards, uh Tyrese Maxi, then Desmond Bane, who got the uh that super deal out in Orlando. We see these guys, he he’s among the league’s premier players for as a shooter. And that’s just among among side stars of the league at shooting the basketball. And this is something that OKC has needed to lean on as they have not been as a team very efficient from the three-point early this season. And we’re taking a look at how he specifically has created this. The Thunder have knocked down 36.8% of their threes in eight games with Joe. This is not taking into account last night’s game against the Hornets. Uh available in the starting lineup this season. On the other hand, five games where he was injured and out of the lineup. It has only shot a devastatingly low 28.8% from downtown. a shocking difference of 8% between one guy being in, one guy being out. Yes, it is a smaller sample size earlier in the season. But in my mind, I have no doubt that Joe is the one who’s making these opportunities as we see him stretching the floor. We see teams have to close out on him. He’s very decisive with when he shoots. So, you have to close out hard and close out under control. Statistically, the return of Joe has done numbers for the Thunder’s offensive output. It passed the eye test as well. And that’s what I’m talking about with passing the eye test. We saw the clips. We saw Joe knocking down these threes in rhythm, these catch and shoot threes. He’s very decisive with when he’s pulling the trigger, when he’s going to keep the ball moving. And this also helps st keep the flow with a guy like Shay leading the point. It’s very boom, boom, boom, passing around, getting the guys involved. And Joe is just a catch and shoot guy. He’s able to take one dribble pull-ups if you close out too hard, and he’s able to get all the way to the basket if you let him. He’s providing everything that you want out of a guy who is just a primarily scoring option out of the bench function. So, I’m giving him a very big hats off early this year for his performance. He’s also helped us helped raise us out of the seller in this metric. I’ll move it so you can see all the numbers here. We were shooting uh sub 30% for the in the midst of Joe’s injury through the first week of the season and that was 29th in the league. We’ve now raised above that, well above that, healthfully above that to 34.4, which is still uh good for 21st in the league. not the best but in that regard at all especially considering that this team last year was uh top seven in three-point shooting which marks the elite point in the NBA cuz in my opinion top 78 is the top 25%. So we have dropped well out of elite status even into the back 25 status and I mean the scoring numbers are still staying the same. So, we’ve been very very well off in a lot of areas except for three-point shooting. And Isaiah Joe is a big big part in why we’ve been able to kind of leverage that and flatten that out and not give teams such an big advantage from the three-point line, which is what we’re going to talk about later as a big key for you guys. Just giving you guys a hit. But we’re going to continue on right now talking about the difference between uh this year and last year, right? We saw last year this team was fourth in points per game with uh 20 and a half. We saw that they won 83% of their contest. Now, the three-point uh three-point numbers that correlate with the the that scoring and that winning, right? We see a three-point percentage of 37.4, which was sixth in the NBA, and uh an average attempts per game of 38.8, which was 10th in the NBA. This season, the Thunder’s points per game have went up a point up to 21 121.6, good for fifth in the league this year. You know, the scoring average does go up year after year. The three-point percentage uh did go down, though. We’re seeing 34.4, four, which we talked about, 21st, which we talked about. But their uh attempts are staying pretty stagnant. They were up uh north of 41 earlier in the year, which I did not like, which was when Joe was not playing. And whenever we were missing most of our looks and shooting in under that 30% mark, that was whenever we were attempting 41. We see that drop down to 39.1, which is 11th in the league. We see the percentage raise up. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Better shot selection, better guys shooting the shots. This team is trending in the right direction. And then you see, of course, the win percentage sitting at a 93% early in this year. The team is 13-1. So the three-point shooting lack as a whole roster has not held the team back so far, but we see it flattening out and we see the scoring numbers going up, offensive ratings going up. This team is moving in the right direction. Joe, a big reason that we have to thank for this. He’s also helping make the Thunder a more unstoppable team in this regard. Now, we’re taking a look at the biggest thing I want to talk about today, right? We are taking a look at what we need to do better at if we want to get back to the finals. The big stat to keep an eye on moving forward, ladies and gentlemen. Right now, we’re 22nd in the league in three-point percentage differential minus 2.6%. Where do teams have to make up these points against us that they’re losing, you know, to SGA hitting all these twos, the hards, floaters, all these efficient two-pointers that we’re taking. We have not been the best or most volume three-point shooting team la even last year. So, it’s the way teams, especially in the playoffs, have made up that gap. Whenever we saw the Pacers go on these runs, the Nuggets go on their wins, it’s in the three-point shooting, holding these teams to even if we’re not shooting well, bad three-point shooting nights on their end and just winning out on that battle has been a key to victory in the past. Even in the Nuggets game seven, both teams shot right around 30% even and we were able to pull that out. These games matter, right? So, we are taking a look at uh the three-point shooting percentage. We are at a deficit this year in that metric. This needs to change because when we take a look at the postseason run from last year, uh, excuse me, the regular season run from last year, we were second in the league in this metric at a plus 3.2 percentage-wise, right? We were taking less attempts than the the teams we were playing by half an attempt a game, but from the three-point land, we were making that up by hitting more shots on average than they were. So, the difference was about the same. Right now, it is at a little bit of a skew in advantage of the other team. And we’ve seen teams take advantage of this because we take a look at the playoff numbers. There’s us at seventh with a negative differential and we dropped some games to the Pacers. Drop some games to the Nuggets due to letting them get back in the game with three-pointers. Especially with the Pacers, they were able to just go on crazy runs, make it out of holes in a snap, blink of an eye based off of hitting three-pointers in spurts. We need to be better at creating uh leveraging that disadvantage that we can be facing right now from that three-point line. We need to be able to do that by a hitting more threes uh at a better clip and then also taking away threes that we’ve seen us do in the past. So, I’m not worried about the defense. Obviously, we have the best defensive rating in the league right now. It has to come from hitting more shots. Isaiah Joe, him getting more minutes, him already doing what he’s doing and just doing more of it is going to be a key in that. This has been Gabriel Evers breaking down Isaiah Joe’s early season performances, his three-point line performances, and OKC shooting in general. Make sure you keep an eye on how that three-point percentage differential leverages out as this season goes on. And make sure you’re subbed up so I can tell you guys about it as well if you’re not keen to it. This has been Gabriel Eversil with Thunder Digest. Make sure you sub up so you can catch me and Bri uh Ryan in the next one. We are trying to hit AK by Allstar break. Peace.

With another OKC Thunder game joining the win column against the Charlotte Hornets last night, the Thunder expand their gap on Victor Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs, Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets, and the rest of the Western Conference field. They’ve done this largely in spite of their three point shooting to start the year, but the team is picking it up as of late. Gabriel Ebersole breaks down why Isaiah Joe is to thank for the late success from distance, Joe’s background as an elite marksman, and one key Thunder stat to look out for as the 2025-26 NBA regular season continues.

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0:00 Oklahoma City Thunder Basketball News
1:40 Isaiah Joe this Season
3:00 Isaiah Joe – Deep Range Specialist
4:45 Joe’s Impact on OKC this Season
8:25 OKC’s Key to Repeating (!)
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