OKC Thunder grades: Young core busts loose in big win over Hawks

Best OKC Thunder reserve performance:

Kenrich Williams is carving out a role for himself on this club that deserves a long hard look as part of the future core. He’s the perfect glue guy and player for your reserve unit because he’s so team-oriented and always seems to deliver precisely what the game needs.

Wiliams was the high-scorer off the bench with 15 points on a highly efficient 7 of 9. In addition, he collected two rebounds and two assists placing second only to Lu Dort with a plus 10 in the plus/minus column.

Best opponent performance:

A rarity, as two players get the hat tip from Intentions as the Hawks big men gave the Thunder coaching crew issues in figuring out how to stop one from rebounding and the other from scoring.

The lesson to pull from this for Sam Presti is even as the team moves toward a positionless strategy in the future a big man who can rebound is still a very necessary commodity.

Capella had a monster night on the boards grabbing 21 in total with nine on the offensive glass a factor that allowed the Hawks to own the glass 60-48.

The double-double was completed with 17 points as Capela also blocked four shots.

The Hawks didn’t make all the offseason moves to bolster their roster with the thinking they’d be 14-19 at this point in the season. As Intentions noted in our 3 keys game preview the Hawks and coach Lloyd Pierce haven’t been able to integrate their new additions fully due to injury (Bogdan Bogdanovic, Kris Dunn) and that’s making it difficult to assess precisely how good the Hawks can be.

One player they don’t have to figure out is John Collins who delivered 25 points and eight rebounds on Friday on an efficient 11 of 19 from the field.

In closing:

With the Hawks’ loss no doubt the rumors will pick back up about trading John Collins and presumably Pierce’s seat is getting hotter with each defeat.

More from Thunderous Intentions

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• 3 OKC Thunder players who can step up in Aleksej Pokusevski’s absence
• Aleksej Pokusevski sidelined approximately 6 weeks with ankle injury
• Damian Lillard does not fit with the OKC Thunder

I maintain, the Hawks; depth will be a factor in the second half, but something to note was the effort was missing particularly on defense. For a team with desires of making the postseason that isn’t something handed to you simply because your team is rich in roster depth.

Effort and consistency are habits that need to be part of team identity and culture.

To that end, there isn’t one game this season where Thunder fans can point to and say ‘the team just stopped defending, competing, or trying to win’.

With the core quartet all delivering tonight for OKC it sure bodes well for the future and on a night like Friday the fact this team already has so many developing young talents and an embarrassment of draft riches awaiting selection it’s simply impossible not to think the Thunder will be back among the contenders sooner than most people think.

You can view the full box score here.

The OKC Thunder are right back in action tonight (Saturday) as they host the Nuggets. Tip-off is  8:00 p.m. EST and 7:00 p.m. CT.