Evaluating the Thunder’s 2021-22 Defense

The 2021-22 season was all about laying the foundation.

It’s usually hard to find anything teams with less than 25 wins are good at.

Most teams in that territory are either dealing with massive injury issues — making them nearly unrecognizable from their healthy counterpart — or they are a team bottoming out with the draft in mind.

The 2021-22 Oklahoma City Thunder (24-58) — more or less — were the intersection of both. Injuries began piling up shortly after the All-Star break, forcing OKC to field lineups that will soon become trivia questions. Prior to said injuries, the Thunder held the title as the NBA’s youngest roster with just three players north of 25-years-old.

So a team that started off as the league’s youngest, and only got younger with each injury, surely wasn’t good at anything, right?

Well, you might be surprised. The Thunder finished the season with the league’s worst offense with a 103.8 rating. The Thunder defense, however, was what kept them in games. And it has the makings of being the identity of the future.

OKC ended the 2021-22 season with a 111.7 rating — good for T-16 and ahead of multiple playoff teams including the New Orleans Pelicans (112), Brooklyn Nets (112.3) and Chicago Bulls (113.2).

OKC’s leader in defensive win shares, Darius Bazley, ranked 84th league-wide with 2.2. This is a perfect example of what OKC was trying to do — and why it should work to even greater effect in the future. The Thunder defense was more-so a sum of its parts rather than led by any one elite defensive player. It is about the system rather than players holding it together. Meaning that as OKC adds talent through the draft, free agency, and via trade, it should hold firm as a system with a proven track record.

The Thunder had plenty of ups and downs defensively throughout the season as coach Mark Daigneault tinkered with rotations and lineups. Here is how the Thunder ranked league-wide each month of the season:

• October - 28

• November - 6

• December - 17

• January - 10

• February - 12

• March - 27

• April - 19

The Thunder defense is still far from perfect. A true rim protector is a must before OKC has any hopes of truly competing, but the foundation is there. With pieces such as Lu Dort, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Kenrich Williams to go along with Bazley, there is a defensive core that should excite Thunder executives and fans alike.

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