For the second season in a row, the OKC Thunder find themselves dominating the Western Conference.
From their top-seeded placement in the standings to their sensational two-way productivity, there appear to be several parallels between this and last season's history-setting squad.
Of course, not everything in comparison has been identical.
Through these first few months of the campaign, there have been a few noteworthy differences with this 2024-25 iteration of Oklahoma City basketball, with one major deviation being the free throw activity of superstar, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
In 2023-24, the guard was a regular resident at the charity stripe, shooting the second-most attempts (649) at an average conversion rate of 87.4 percent.
He frequented the line so often, in fact, that he earned the rather disparaging moniker of "free throw merchant," a title that we at TI found quite exaggerative.
Now, through 26 games played this season, it appears a flip has been switched when it comes to these favorable calls being made in the Thunder stud's direction, for even though he ranks third in total free throws attempted (210), he's accumulating them at an incredibly inconsistent rate.
Frankly, nothing from this season makes such a sentiment clearer than a recently discovered factoid by the folks at Real Sports.
Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggles with getting foul calls
Through their data digging, they discovered that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads the league in games played this season where he's dropped 35 or more points with fewer than five free throws attempted.
The most recent outing where this took place came Thursday night in a matchup against the Orlando Magic where he scored precisely 35 points yet went to the line a measly four times in 36 minutes of action.
What makes this statistic all the more astonishing is the fact that SGA leads the league in drives per game with 21.4. Against the Magic, he bumped this number up to a whopping 26.
While clearly an issue, the Thunder star recently provided a much-needed reality check on the matter, stating that, at the end of the day, "you have to control what you can control out there."
This, in his eyes, means trying not to "anticipate contact" and to remain aggressive on offense, with the end goal being to buy a bucket, not a whistle call.
Still, this lack of action at the foul line is starting to get out of hand and has impacted not only his on-court activities but everyone on the Thunder in a significant way, as the team as a whole ranks second to last in attempts per game (19.5) despite driving at the highest rate (58.8).