OKC Thunder rises in week 8 national power rankings

Week eight of power rankings find the OKC Thunder climbing on every national list after winning back-to-back games versus the Pistons and Raptors.

While the Thunder are still fully invested in tanking it’s clear this young roster isn’t about to roll over and play deal or raise the white flag anytime soon.

OKC Thunder rises in week 8 national power rankings

Overall this season hasn’t run the typical course with COVID still playing a factor. Once again teams are getting hit hard with the Bulls and Nets having to put 10 and seven players respectively in quarantine.

Another factor is this season which began once again on the typical dates is witnessing more injuries than normal likely because of the truncated offseason and many players participating in the Olympics.

That is equating to a very different ladder this season and while the Nets have held the top position in the East while the Warriors, Suns and Jazz have seemingly separated themselves in the West there is much more jostling underneath that quartet of teams and even that quartet isn’t completely safe.

As such, this season could experience a much more intense battle for playoff berths and we could find some teams who expected to have home court seeds end up needing to participate in the play-in tournament.

Suffice to say this season is drastically different than normal. All 30 teams are dealing with injuries with only five (OKC Thunder, Cavaliers, Wolves, Kings, and Spurs) with just one player on their injury report.

So let’s take a look at the National media power rankings for week eight with their specific insights and positioning for the OKC Thunder.

OKC Thunder power ranking – NBA.com:

John Schuhmann doesn’t just serve up weekly analytics he is the master at using statistics to explain specific ebbs and flows of a team or player.

In week eight of his weekly missive, he touches on the regression of (parts of) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s game. This isn’t meant to be a slight to SGA – Schuhmann, like everyone, knows Shai is garnering double and triple teams.

Rather he demonstrates via the stats how the OKC Thunder won twice in week eight when SGA was performing closer to his pre-2021 standards.

Schuhmann also dives into the clutch time as per the excerpt below and raises the Thunder two spots from 29th to 27th in week eight. To read the full OKC Thunder entry and view where NBA ranks every team in week eight click here.

"After coming up empty against the Lakers and Mavs over the weekend, the Thunder are 7-6 in games that were within five points in the last five minutes and 1-12 otherwise. (Only the Wizards (12-1, 3-11) have a bigger discrepancy between their clutch and non-clutch records.) They’ve already played clutch games against both the Pelicans (a win) and Clippers (a loss), and they’ll wrap up their four-game homestand against those two teams on Wednesday and Saturday."

ESPN Poll:

This being the week of Stephen Curry, first on the precipice of making history behind the arc, then doing it on Tuesday, the ESPN panel took a different approach to week eight power rankings.

In this version, the 3-pointer is the focus. Players on the cusp of becoming the franchise leader are tapped or how the perimeter affects the team. In the case of the OKC Thunder, Tim MacMahon cites the lack of perimeter defense by the club and their own poor marksmanship from behind the 3-point line.

The Thunder moves up one spot to 28th given their two victories (Pistons, Raptors). For the full article and ESPN panel’s week eight power rankings click here.

"The Thunder are allowing 14.6 made 3s per game, which is on pace to be the second most in NBA history for a season, according to ESPN Stats & Information data. Oklahoma City also ranks last in the league in 3-point percentage (.307). That’s the kind of combination likely to lead to a high lottery pick. — MacMahon"

CBS Sports:

Colin Ward-Henninger can’t hide how much he likes the grittiness of this OKC Thunder squad (just read the opening line of his excerpt below).

CW-H raises OKC up from the last spot (30th) to 27th in week eight of his power rankings which can be read in their entirety here.

"Only the Thunder could suffer an NBA-record 73-point loss and actually move up in the Power Rankings. That’s because OKC bounced back for consecutive wins over the Pistons and Raptors to close out the week. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who missed the record-setting shellacking, averaged 28 points and 11 assists in the subsequent wins, while Lu Dort put up 21.7 points for the week on 42 percent 3-point shooting."

Hoops Habit:

While Hoops Habit didn’t serve up their typical weekly power rankings offering they did offer an intriguing substitute. Writer Michael Shearer offers the power rankings for NBA League Pass instead.

The OKC Thunder are a team Shearer enjoys watching and as such, they rank 25th on his list. To pursue Shearer’s full article click here.

"Despite their ranking, these guys have been a pleasant surprise overall. Considering half the roster sounds like a 2K simulated college class, they’ve been feisty on defense, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has brought the highlights.Josh Giddey is already one of my favorite passers in the league. Poku is always interesting, in a NASCAR-crash kind of way. This team is still horrendous overall, though, and boring jerseys and a terrible broadcast team drag down their ranking. I haven’t decided how I feel about the unique silver-grey court yet, but I lean towards hating it."

Week eight witnessed the OKC Thunder climbing in each of the national power ranking lists (27th or 28th). What is clear is that the national scribes all seem to respect how hard OKC fights and reward them accordingly.