Though guys like Ajay Mitchell, Cason Wallace, and Jaylin Williams may be garnering the lion's share of praise and attention from fans and pundits when it comes to the discussion of most vital OKC Thunder role players, Isaiah Joe is someone who's unjustly flying under the radar.
Simply put, the wing has literally been the driving force in fixing the club's most glaring on-court weakness in three-point shooting.
Isaiah Joe directly responsible for Thunder shooting improvements
Earlier in the campaign, Oklahoma City was seemingly incapable of connecting from long range on offense. At one point, they even found themselves ranking dead last in three-point shooting percentage with a putrid clip of 28.8 percent.
However, since Joe's reintroduction to the lineup following a bout with a knee contusion that postponed his season debut to October 30, the Thunder have managed to pull a complete 180 with their success rate from beyond the arc.
With Joe in the fold, OKC has gone from the worst three-point shooting squad to the fourth-best with a 38.7 percentage.
Of course, his impact is felt in a bevy of other places outside of perimeter scoring.
The Thunder place in the 82 percentile in effective field goal percentage (57.0), 95 percentile in points per 100 possessions (125.5), 98 percentile in point differential (+20.0), and 99 percentile in opponent turnover percentage (21.0) with him on the court.
Accompanied by the aforementioned advanced metrics, Joe also finds himself amid a career-best campaign from an individual standpoint, as he's posting 13.1 points and 2.8 rebounds a night while shooting 40.7 percent from deep on a team-high 7.1 attempts.
Fortunately, Joe's contributions are starting to gain recognition from some in-the-know NBA personalities, with The Athletic's Sam Vecenie recently declaring him an "unsung hero" thus far into the year, and even said that he's someone that "we don't talk enough about" during a recent edition of the Game Theory Podcast.
Now in his fourth year with the Thunder, the 26-year-old is objectively playing his best brand of basketball yet.
While Ajay Michell and Aaron Wiggins have been argued as being two of the best bargain players the league currently has to offer, with his level of production attached to a gradually descending four-year, $48 million deal, it should go without saying that Isaiah Joe has officially thrust himself into such a conversation as well.
Though perhaps lost in the shadows of some of his peers, the sixth-year pro has quietly become the perfect role player for this Thunder team.