Aleksej Pokusevski's Polarizing Position with Oklahoma City

Aleksej Pokusevski hasn't featured in the three games since his return for the G League

As the Oklahoma City Thunder was wrapping up its third consecutive win in Portland Thursday there was a pretty glaring omission from the box score.

This begs the question, what exactly is going on with Aleksej Pokusevski?

On Jan. 14 the Thunder (17-34) assigned Pokusevski to the G League following a string of lackluster performances. In his eight appearances with the Thunder’s G League affiliate, Pokusevski averaged a little over seven points a game providing little evidence of improvement from his time with the Blue.

This is the first substantial G League stint for Pokusevski this season, having featured in 36 of the Thunder’s first 39 games. But since being recalled on Jan. 31 he has yet to feature for the big league club in three games.

The good news for the Thunder, and most certainly bad news for Pokusevski is OKC has won all three games since his return — just the third time this season with a stretch of more than two wins.

With the additions of Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Aaron Wiggins in the 2021 NBA draft have seen Pokusevski’s minutes drop from 24 to 15 minutes a game this season. The Serbian is averaging 4.6 points, 4 rebounds and an assist this season, and has shown flashes of the potential the Thunder saw during his time with Olympiacos, but has shot just 35.8% from the field and 23% percent from behind the arc.

Thunder coach Mark Daigneault has stressed throughout the season that he has no set rotation, but one thing that has been set since his return is that Pokusevski is not a part of it.

He has not played for OKC since Jan. 9, and despite it being hard to see when he may feature next, the Thunder have opted to keep him with the main roster for the time being rather than continue his time in the G League.

There is some hope, though, that next week’s trade deadline might see a move or two for the Thunder to open up some minutes.

Pokusevski was one of the youngest players in the 2020 draft, so the Thunder brass knew they were getting a project with the 17th pick and having turned 20 on Dec. 26 that project is still very much underway.

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