The Days of Thunder: Week one OKC Thunder recap

The Good from this week of OKC Thunder basketball

A week in the books, the Oklahoma City Thunder had no shortage of talking points, headlines, and debates both good, bad, and ugly.

Let’s start with the good, the good is Darius Bazley. Now, I know many of you just did an old-timey spit-take spewing coffee all over your computer screen at the idea Darius Bazley was the good of the week for the OKC Thunder. Somehow, this third-year wing has begun a polarizing figure on what is projected to be the worst team in the NBA and currently sits 0-4 with their “shock the world” hopes already dashed.

The conversation around Darius Bazley is simply wrong, he has improved! That is why he is in a good category, not only has he improved but the situations he is being placed into have improved through four games. If you take a look through fan forums, Twitter, comment sections, you will see a routine basing of Bazley. With claims, such as “He has not even improved!”

That claim is simply false. Now, has he improved to the degree you have hoped for? Well, if the answer is no, you put too much stock into four NBA games. Without a doubt, Bazley has seen a boost to his game.

Darius Bazley is shooting a career-best 73-percent at the rim through four games and 99-minutes. That is greatly improved from his 52-percent mark his rookie season, and a 59-percent peak last season. His Short-Mid-range jumper is the best of his career as well while his overall mid-range percentage is misleading due to an 0-for-2 from his long-mid-range area.

Does the former New Balance intern still need to improve? Absolutely! To maximize his potential, he has to at least become respectable from three, marching closer to his rookie season output of 34-percent compared to last season’s 29-percent clip from deep. So far this year, Bazley is 1-for-15 from three.

A lot has been made of his defense, where he is tasked with a ton of responsibility in this small-ball look, he has the highest steal percentage (0.9-percent) and block percentage (1.9-percent) of his career. When playing this small-ball style getting steals and blocks which leads to ending possession is key for a team that lacks paint protection and can not afford to give teams time to exploit them.

The 21-year-old also has a 21.5-percent defensive rebounding percentage which would mark the highest of his career which is impressive given the fact a year ago he landed in the top 96th percentile of the NBA.

The Bad from the first week of OKC Thunder basketball

The Oklahoma City Thunder are rebuilding, investing in the NBA Draft, which includes the team actively trying to construct a roster of young players that they hope to develop but also lose games due to their inexperience. Losing games, in turn, helps the odds that the organization will get a top pick to land a blue-chip prospect.

This is the second year in a row that the Oklahoma City Thunder enter the season without a pathway to the postseason. Even the surprising 2019-20 run headed up by Chris Paul, while ESPN only gave the team a 0.2-percent chance to make the postseason, the pieces were there if everything went perfectly, and everything did go percent a rare feat in the NBA.

Even if this roster hits its peak, it is not a playoff team. There is no debating or defending that with national media basketball minds. However, the issue was compounded by the first two games of the Oklahoma City Thunder season being absolute blowout losses. One an explainable outcome, against the top tier Utah Jazz, one unexpected in Houston against the Rockets.

This led to every national talking head to either poke fun at the OKC Thunder, while annoying ultimately something easy to brush off, but the other outcome this has produced is a 13-minute diatribe about the evil Thunder and how bad for the sport it is that Oklahoma City utilizes a philosophy that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban openly admitted to using and joked about.

Mark Cuban, who has chased (and failed to sign) every Free Agent name that hits the open market with even an ounce of talent, and is a rare owner that would rather throw money at the problem and figure out how to be relevant again, decided to tank. While his first attempt ended up with Dennis Smith Jr, and the second true attempt landed Luka Doncic seeing instant success, he still did it while Dirk played out the string of his career and he had a hall of fame head coach on the payroll.

The point is, this is a team-building strategy that is used often, some times get it right, others don’t. We should trust Sam Presti to get it right, but we can all do without the NBA talking heads grasping their pearls at the notion of a team not gunning for the playoffs.

Song of the week: Leaving L.A. by Father John Misty. What better than an L.A.-themed song that features a 13-minute diatribe to begin Lakers’ week with the Thunder heading to LaLa Land this weekend and we stare down the barrel of 33 more podcasts about how evil the Thunder are.