OKC Thunder: three bold predictions for 2021-22 season

Lu Dort, with improved finishing, will become an offensive weapon for the OKC Thunder

The Oklahoma City Thunder are still in the midst of a rebuild, trying to figure out what each player can be. With the OKC Thunder cycling through young players and overturning their roster over the last few seasons, it is easy to view Lu Dort as a boxed-in player.

Dort is still just a 22-year-old guard, fresh off a summer in which he participated in the Olympics for Team Canada, and he is barely a season into his NBA Career! While we are all used to watching the Arizona State product on the hardwood, he has only played in 88 career games. A traditional NBA season, which we return to this season, is 82-games long.

Throughout his NBA career, the undrafted guard has been stellar on the defensive end. So good that he might viral highlights on that end of the floor, which is incredibly hard to do. Especially last year on a team that lost 50-of-72 games.

While he had moments in his rookie season of incredible defense and offensive flashes like scoring 30-points in an NBA Playoff game, he also had moments where he went for six points and 0-for-9 from deep in the same series.

Last year, Lu Dort stepped up in a big way shooting 34-percent from deep, with basketball reference projecting his three-point clip for the 2021-22 season at 35-percent.

However, last year while Dort was bumping up his averages, he took a lot of uncharacteristic threes. While at times it ended up being a 40-point game against Utah, other games hurt his overall percentages when he was asked to create his shot off the dribble.

According to cleaning the glass, Dort shot 46-percent on corner threes (up from 31-percent his rookie season). In the preseason, the combo guard has continued to three-point improvement in shooting 62-percent from behind the arc (10-of-16), of players who took ten attempts in the preseason slate, he is only behind Nets sharpshooter Joe Harris for the preseason.

His offensive improvement from deep feels real and as though you can count on it. Dort is a big body, and a good free-throw shooter (75-percent from the line for his career), if he improves his rim finishing it will unlock his offensive ceiling.

A year ago, Lu Dort was one of the worst rim finishers in the NBA, which is odd considering his athletic 6’3, 215-pound frame. Dort finished at just a 51-percent clip at the cup, which is down from his rookie season percentage by four points.

The defensive mastermind has made it public knowledge that this is an area of his game spent the summer working on, players typically have their biggest leap after a summer competing in the Olympics, and he is still just 22 years old! For those reasons, I think Lu Dort will have an offensive outburst that will make the NBA landscape reconsider the label they place on him.