Roller-coaster Defense Embodies the Highs and Lows of the Thunder's season

The Thunder have shown flashes of strong defense this season, but will need consistency to find sustained success

As the Thunder continues to find its offensive identity with four rookies it can be easy to forget that there is another end of the floor the youngest team in the league must conquer simultaneously.

At an average age of 24.1 years old the Thunder’s rotation is largely made up of players with three years or less of NBA experience — with Mike Muscala (8) and Derrick Favors (11) being the only two with more.

Understandably, a team as young and inexperienced as this Thunder team struggled out of the gate containing teams — allowing 111.7 points per game over six games in October, leading to a 1-5 record and the league’s third-worst defensive rating (111.1).

Then, suddenly, coach Mark Daigneault’s team had it figured out. The Thunder did some soul-searching and turned into the league’s sixth-best defense for November with a 104 defensive rating. The issue, however, was the offense was doing some searching of its own during this time.

Despite a Top-6 defense the Thunder managed a measly 5-9 record — the only team in the Top-14 with a losing record during November.

In November the Thunder’s defense was tasked with carrying the league’s second-worst offense and keeping games close with hopes of pulling out close wins — four of the Thunder’s five wins came by single-digits.

The Thunder have struggled to maintain this form into the month of December conceding an average of 118.8 points in five contests. This number is skewed slightly due to an injury-riddled Dec. 2, 152-79 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies that saw the Thunder take home the mantle of “Worst loss in NBA history” with them. But OKC has kept just one of its other four opponents under the 107.6 NBA scoring average.

There are the building blocks on this roster of a strong defense. Luguentz Dort has shown stretches of All-NBA caliber defense, in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s last full season (19/20) he finished T-21 in defensive win shares and Kenrich Williams is No. 10 in defensive rating this season among qualified players.

The Thunder’s performances through stretches of this season should give hope to a team still in the process of finding its identity. A future of being able to find success not only by outsourcing its opponents, but holding them in check on nights where the offense isn’t quite there.

Like most things in the NBA, consistency is going to be key for the Thunder defense going forward. With young teams, such as the Thunder’s, that should come with time — it will just keep them vulnerable in the short term as they learn on the fly.

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