Victor Oladipo is More Valuable to the Thunder Than We Thought

Victor Oladipo has slowly become my favorite player on the Oklahoma City Thunder; his injury Sunday night increased those sentiments.

Does that ^^^ sound backwards? Because it’s not supposed to. Victor Oladipo is probably the second most valuable player on the Thunder, and it took his injury for me to realize this. That sounds much better.

As of now, Oladipo is one of the few Thunder players who are above-average on both the offensive and defensive end. Oladipo, Andre Roberson and Russell Westbrook are the only every-day players (sorry Kyle Singler) with an offensive rating above 100 and a defensive rating below 100.

Dipo gets the wonderful assignment of guarding a team’s second-best perimeter player every night. The Thunder need Westbrook to conserve as much energy as possible on the defensive end. So the OKC perimeter players fluctuate on the positions they guard on a night-to-night basis (with Roberson ALWAYS taking the best player).

But when Dipo went down Sunday night, it caused a wrench in those plans. Anthony Morrow took Victor’s spot in the “starting lineup” to start the third quarter. The Thunder gave up 28 points in that frame, and Dipo’s absence was a large part of that.

Watch what happens when Russ is forced to guard Marcus Smart.

Instead of Victor Oladipo handling Marcus Smart, Russ had to draw the assignment. That’s because Morrow’s defense at full-effort is still worse than Russ when he half-butts on that end.

The starting lineup is where the Thunder try to open up big enough leads to take pressure off a truly horrendous bench. But without Dipo playing, Boston opened up a 12-point lead in the third quarter, and it was actually Semaj Christon and the bench who helped bridge that gap. That’s not going to happen ten more times this season.

Oladipo’s Offense

The beauty with Victor is that not only is he the Thunder’s second-best defensive player. He’s also the second-best offensive threat for OKC.

Oladipo averages 16.1 points a game, good for second on the Thunder. He has the sixth-best field goal percentage while taking the second-most attempts; he’s also the teams’ second best three-point shooter while taking the most attempts per game.

Oladipo’s first four games were atrocious, mostly because he was trying to figure out his fit in the offense. Well now he has. His shooting percentages are slowly rising as he takes smarter shots. More importantly, the assists are rising exponentially.

After going 11 games without a single five-assist performance, Dipo has tallied five in the last 13 games. In a perfect world, Oladipo will be the sixth man who runs the second-unit but plays crunch time minutes with the starters. He has the ability to play a point guard/shooting guard hybrid, which would work perfectly with Cameron Payne’s style as well.

Watch how Oladipo takes the extra dribble to force Omer Asik to step up, leaving Adams wide open for an easy dunk.

Dipo is only getting more comfortable with the Thunder offense and players, and it’s really starting to show. Without him, Russell Westbrook lacks another perimeter player who can both create for himself as well as create for others.

Next: Thunder vs. Trail Blazers Preview

If he can’t play tonight against the Trail Blazers or tomorrow against the Jazz, the Thunder could be looking at two straight division losses. THAT’S how important Oladipo is to OKC. It’s too bad it took a terrifying fall for us to realize that.