Five Thunder Takeaways from the Christmas Day Dub
By Tony Heim
3. Kyle Singler defies the laws of science
I really don’t get it. Somehow, someway, every time Kyle Singler steps on the court the OKC Thunder play well. A quick search of “Kyle Singler” on Twitter would tell you otherwise.
late night thought:Kyle Singler gets paid $4.3 mil and the bathroom law is $2.3 mil, thats 6.6 miLLion that could be going towards education
— ralph (@FanklinTurtle) December 15, 2016
All I want for Christmas is the Kyle Singler experiment to end. No more minutes please.
— Adam (@AdamJoseph____) December 26, 2016
The list goes on. And on. And on. The thing is, none of these people are wrong. Singler is not a very good NBA basketball player. But the Thunder play like the Warriors when he’s on the court.
Take tonight for example. Singler played five minutes, where he recorded one statistic: a foul. Yet, the Thunder outscored Minnesota by eight points in that span. In his seven minutes against Boston he shot 1-2 from the field and that was it. But the Thunder outscored Boston by 5 with him in.
Than we go over to the advanced stats. Singler is part of three of the Thunder’s seven best two-man lineups according to net rating. With five-man lineups who have played at least five minutes together (thankfully Singler doesn’t play that much), Singler is a part of three of the best nine.
But here’s the best one….
HIS NET RATING OF 5.5 IS THE EXACT SAME AS RUSSELL WESTBROOK. That’s right folks, the Thunder outscore team’s at the same rate with Russell Westbrook on the court as they do with Kyle Singler on the court.
The only way I can explain this is that the rest of the team realizes they have to step it up once he touches the floor.
Honestly props to Singler. Keep defying all of us who think we know about this game Kyle, you obviously are way ahead of your time.