2019-20 NBA Season Preview Series: Oklahoma City Thunder

We’re going a little out of order if you’ve been following along, technically the Suns are up next and that blog is written I’m just waiting on a quick statement from the #1 Suns fan on the planet Jared Carrabis before I can publish it to the masses. So in the meantime we may as well talk about the next team up which is the Oklahoma City Thunder. As you can see by the photo at the top of this blog, we are entering a new era in OKC basketball but this isn’t exactly your standard tank and rebuild era. Make no mistake the Thunder are certainly rebuilding, but I’m not ready to put them in the tanking category just yet because the talent on this roster isn’t all that bad. We’ll get to all that in a moment, but first it’s time to relive what was a 49 win season, their highest win total in 3 years

2018-19 Season Highlights

Now obviously a couple huge parts of those highlights are no longer on the team, but like I said there is still real talent on this OKC roster. Listen when you lose in the first round three straight seasons maybe change isn’t a bad thing and few teams underwent as much change as the Thunder this offseason. A quick look at their roster as of this moment

and there are a ton of intriguing pieces. For the sake of this blog we’ll assume they are actually going to hold onto Chris Paul, even if there’s a strong chance he’s traded after the all important Dec 15th date. While their core may have taken a step back compared to the talent of last season, let’s not pretend like CP3/Gallo/Adams aren’t three legit veterans that can have this team competitive. Gallo is coming off perhaps the best season of his career and played the most games since 2012, so if he’s healthy there’s no reason he can’t be a 18-20 point scorer. Sure he’s not the two way player Paul George is, not even close actually, but from an offensive standpoint he can more than hold his own. Steven Adams should love playing with Chris Paul, a point guard who has a ton of experience playing in P&R with the same sort of center that has Adams’ skillset. Now remember, at $136,020,516 this is the 7th most expensive roster in the league and that’s no small number for a small market, but depending on what they do with Paul they could only have 2 big time contracts heading into next season with a fuck ton of draft picks. From a rebuilding standpoint, OKC is in a great position.

In addition to the vets, this team’s young talent is nothing to sneeze at either. SGA is basically one of the most coveted young point guards in the league and showed real signs as a Clipper last season. Terrance Ferguson is a decent defender who took a mini leap last year filling in as a starter for Andre Roberson who you may have forgotten about. He’s one of the best perimeter defenders in the entire league and should be back. Then you have guys like Darius Bazley who they took this year in the lottery and someone like Nerlens Noel who is a young reserve big who played probably his best basketball in OKC last year. The point is when you think of rebuilding franchises, you don’t really think of a team that has this much talent.

You want a reason to be optimistic about the Thunder? You start with the defense. This was a top 4 defense last season and there’s no reason to think that should change all that much. They’ve been at least a top 10 defense for the past like 4 seasons and what they lose with someone like George, they gain with someone like Roberson.

It’s very hard to score off turnovers or off second chance points against the Thunder because they rebound exceptionally well and now that their PG shouldn’t turn it over as much those opportunities should also be down. I’m also intrigued by SGA’s length and his development as a defender. His rating was a little high as a Clipper, but that’s to be expected with almost any rookie. Now that he’s used to NBA competition, if he makes a jump on that end it’s going to be a pretty big deal. All signs point to this dude becoming a stud

But given their new group of talent, the Thunder are probably going to adjust how they play a little bit. Not in terms of pace, the Thunder and Clippers were 6th and 7th in pace so that most likely won’t change, but the obvious adjustment in my opinion should be that they are no longer be a heavy isolation team. OKC was 2nd in the NBA in isolation frequency at 8.9% and when your two best players are Westbrook and George that makes sense. You give them the ball and let them create. I get that Paul ran a ton of isolation in HOU, but I see this as an opportunity for OKC to change it up. Their iso heavy offense was the 16th best offense in the league, and you have a group of talent that should warrant they move away from that. Gallo and SGA are coming from a team that almost never ran iso and in turn had a top 10 offense. Why not gear it towards them? Dennis Schroder isn’t all that good in isolation either, so I say switch it up. What does that look like?

Well how about P&R? Ball handler scoring out of the P&R was an issue for OKC last year, ranking in the 34th percentile. Westbrook ranked in the 39th percentile and their new point guard came in at 59th. That’s an upgrade in my book. SGA came in at 57th as well and played on a team that was in the 72nd percentile in ball handler scoring out of that set. They have the talent to utilize that way more than their 17.9% frequency we saw last season. The more P&R the better in my opinion because from that you can also take advantage when it comes to spot up shooting. Draw defenders and kick to someone like Gallo who shot 42/44% in catch and shoot situations. As a spot up shooter Gallo ranked in the 91st percentile last season scoring 1.20 points per possession. If healthy, that’s a real weapon for this guy and not that much of a dip from George (95th, 1.27). What’s impressive is Gallo’s frequency was pretty much double than what George had in OKC. I say the more of that the better.

Not only spot up situations, but OKC should definitely run more players off screens, especially Gallo. They were 26th in frequency off screens last year, but they have the talent to adjust. Gallo ranked in the 91st percentile in this set, which was actually better than George. Making this more a part of their offense should help.

There’s no way around the fact that the West is absolutely loaded and playoff spots are going to be hard to come by for pretty much everyone. You can kiss it goodbye if they end up moving Paul, but if he stays the whole year why couldn’t this team be competitive? Vegas doesn’t seem to think he’s going to stick around, and who knows Sam Presti could decide by February to really blow it up even further and ultimately trade Adams and Paul if the playoffs seem out of reach. That’s why its hard to gauge just what OKC might be because there is so much unknown about what this roster could look like in just a few months. But what we know is they should be pretty nails defensively, and if everyone stays all year they’ll be a bitch to play.

Official Greenie Prediction w/ Chris Paul: 42 wins

Official Greenie Prediction w/o Chris Paul: 31 wins