At long last, the Oklahoma City Thunder are at full strength, and you know what? Even with what felt like a never-ending carousel of injuries, they still hold a league-best 57-15 record. What's even better is that the unexpected rest will benefit them greatly once the playoffs roll around.
An 82-game season is long and grueling. The wear and tear it puts on players' bodies is real, making it so there aren't any players who are truly 100 percent healthy at this point in the year. Still, they have to march right into the postseason, where the physicality and intensity ramp up to a new level.
You've seen it plenty of times in the past — teams run out of gas in the playoffs. Star players get worn down, injuries pop up from overuse, and some squads don't have deep benches to fall back on.
Luckily, for OKC, the players who missed substantial time — from Jalen Williams to Alex Caruso — will enter the postseason with fresher legs than their opponents. For a team that wants to extend its season for an additional two months for the second consecutive year, that's quite the strength. Talk about turning a negative into a positive.
Thunder's injuries can play in their favor in the postseason
To put things into perspective, the Thunder's starting lineup of SGA, Dort, Williams, Holmgren, and Hartenstein has played only six games together this season. Six of the 72 games it has played this season. Read that again. That would be a disadvantage for any other team, but not for OKC.
The Thunder have one of the deepest benches in the league, hence why they still sit atop the West, even after all the injuries they've dealt with. Part of what makes Oklahoma City so great is its never-ending arsenal of weapons. Sam Presti has a knack for spawning players out of nowhere, or in the case of the Jared McCain trade, capitalizing on Daryl Morey's questionable decision-making.
There are things beyond Presti's control, so although he equipped the Thunder with the personnel they needed to withstand injuries, he didn't anticipate that OKC would end the regular season barely seeing its starters on the floor together.
Meanwhile, the rest of the West might've quietly breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the injuries would give them a chance to catch up to OKC, but that didn't happen.
Now, the Thunder can flip it around and spin it into a positive against their opponents when it matters most. If you thought they were relentless enough as is, just wait.