With an extreme lack of fanfare, the 2024–25 Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC) now have the second best average point differential in the history of the NBA. At the time of writing, OKC is 44-10 and are mid-season favorites to take the Western conference. Most of the teams surrounding OKC on that point differential list won the title, most in memorably dominant postseason runs. These were the KD Warriors, the dynastic 72-10 Bulls, the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Bucks — the NBA’s teams of history. Does this Thunder squad fit in?
The immediately striking difference is that Oklahoma City’s roster, on paper, is not star-studded in the ways the other teams I’ve mentioned are. Not even close. The standard for a plus-10 net rating team generally lands around one top 10 player all time, a Hall of Fame defensive player, and maybe a few more supporting All-Stars. A structural cousin to the 2025 Thunder might be the second three-peat Bulls: a prolific score-first guard, a long, switchable wing that can create their own shot, a specialized high-motor defensive weapon. Do Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Alex Caruso match up to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman? They don’t.
Or do they? Shai is the closest statistical analogue to Jordan since he retired. How many guards have ever scored over 30 points a game on better than 50 percent shooting over a regular season? Jordan, Gilgeous-Alexander, and Stephen Curry. Curry did it once. Jordan did it four times, and Shai is working on his third such season. Guards that score 30 a game that also average a block and a steal? Again three players, and again only Jordan and SGA have reached those benchmarks more than once.
One more measure, and one of the most important. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has won his minutes this season by an average of 13.1 points every game. In Jordan’s best season with recorded plus minus data, Chicago’s 69 win 1996-97 campaign, he was +10 a game. For another reference, Curry was +12.9 a game in 2017. This is as dominant a regular season stretch as the NBA has seen.
These are context-dependent ways to compare players, and a critical piece of where this OKC team will end up lies in translating all of these numbers into the playoffs. Unlike the 90s, translating a guard’s offensive game into postseason basketball involves maneuvering around a whole lot more in terms of defensive schemes and officiating shifts. You can double team!
At the moment, Shai has a short sample of playoff experience that I’d hesitate to draw predictive conclusions from. Also, Shai is 26. Many of the all time greats hadn’t built winning playoff reputations at that age. What we have seen from Shai in and out of the playoffs is still an optimistic picture: isolation heavy, midrange-happy guards and wings with versatile shot profiles have a track record of maintaining their production in intense environments. On this OKC team, the challenge Shai will likely face is taking advantage of when the defense forces him not to shoot —– the puzzle that every star in the lineage of ball dominant scorers has had to solve. Shai scores a league-leading 11 points a game out of pick and roll actions that defenses can force him to pass out of. And to some extent, Shai can’t control what happens when he gives his teammates a 4-on-3.
Is Jalen Williams a championship number two? Offensively, he isn’t. Williams is a strong offensive player right now, but doesn’t have the self-creation players like Jaylen Brown or Jamal Murray do. He is an excellent off ball option with only middling efficiency in isolation or pick and rolls.
But what Williams brings on defense more than compensates. Oklahoma City’s most used lineup without either Isaiah Hartenstein or Chet Holmgren sticks Williams at center and, with a maximum on-court height of 6’ 6”, produces an absurd 89.4 defensive rating (over 124 possessions, which admittedly is noisy). Much of that story is how active and rotationally sound the remaining four players are. Williams is still doing the impossible as an undersized five. His 7’ 2” wingspan and instant reaction speed contributes to both the fifth highest deflection rate in the game and allowing only a 51 percent shooting percentage when contesting shots in the paint. That’s the same percentage allowed by Victor Wembanyama, although Wembanyama is more frequently contesting shots from bigger players.
In general, their defense is what is pushing the Thunder to their +13.0 net rating. OKC’s 104.5 points allowed per 100 possessions is nine points better than league average and would be a historic margin if maintained through the rest of the season. Without a marquee all-defensive center for most of the year, however, the Thunder separate themselves from other great defenses by relying on generating turnovers and maintaining high off-ball defensive activity. On one hand, the Thunder can execute this strategy so well because they play so many long guards with fast hands. Alex Caruso, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, and Cason Wallace are all first class nuisances in passing lanes and around loose handles. On the other hand, I am not sure that strategy will continue to work as well in the postseason, when everyone is playing hard and coaches can adjust their sets to take away opportunities for steals. Teams that thrive on turnovers and transition in the regular season can fade in slower, half-court heavy series — see the Thunder last season against the Mavericks.
My long distance forecast: the rest of the Western Conference is looking suspicious, so I’d give OKC better than a 60 percent chance to make the finals, and would love to see them contest the Celtics in a tight June series.
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