Normalizing production
For as much as I’m going to talk about the roster and schematic changes they’ve made in this stretch, the biggest factor in their ascension is clearly just the fact that their shooting percentages are starting to normalize after being firmly in the toilet to start the year.
They’re canning an unbelievable 42.9 percent of their three’s over the past 10 games which leads the league by a mile, and they’re posting an absurd 58.7 true shooting percentage. While they’re definitely not going to keep that up throughout the year, it’s a good sign that they’re finally starting to progress to the mean.
They’ve been one of the worst shooting teams in the league for most of this season which made everything they tried to do on offense that much harder. Defenses could pack the lane and dare the Thunder to shoot or force Oklahoma City’s creators to give up the ball and make their supporting cast beat them. Sometimes the role players actually did come through and generate offense for the team, but the Thunder were essentially living and dying by George and Westbrook.
As of right now, though, the tide seems like it’s starting to change; the Thunder’s supporting cast is coming through significantly more often than it ever had before. Just look at the balance of the floor in the clip below:
Given how bad it got at some points, it’s kind of a miracle that their offense hasn’t been a total abomination and that Paul George is in the middle of his best season offensively by far.
Now that the shooting is starting to normalize and the floor is starting to open up, we could see the team take a big leap forward in both the Western Conference and the NBA as a whole.