Thunder Season Review: Uncertainty and Low Expectations to Start Season

Looking back at the 2020-21 season for the Thunder, there was much uncertainty at the start of the year which led to low expectations.

Over the next several days, the Inside The Thunder crew will recap the 2020-21 season for the Oklahoma City Thunder. For starters, we'll take a look at the preseason and first few games of the year. 

While it was assumed that OKC wouldn't have a great season after trading away nearly all of their experienced players, it was hard to truly believe that at first. Just one season before, the Thunder were expected to be one of the bottom teams in the league and ultimately made the playoffs with ease and almost pulled off a first-round upset. 

With that in mind, things did feel a bit different this time around. For starters, Oklahoma City wasn't going to have future Hall of Famer Chris Paul at the helm. Either way, until the first few games went down, you weren't really sure how this team would perform. 

With a complete roster overhaul, there were many new faces during the preseason. Going 1-2 in their three games prior to the official start of the season, guys like Al Horford, George Hill, Aleksej Pokusevski, Theo Maledon, Kenrich Williams and others made their debut in a Thunder uniform. 

Through these three games, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander would lead the team in total points and assists while Pokusevski was the lead rebounder. Guard Frank Jackson would produce 37 points in three game while shooting 50.0 percent from deep before being the final roster cut just before the start of the regular season. 

While the Thunder's preseason campaign wasn't very impressive, it didn't make sense to judge a team on what they did before the regular season even started. 

From there, OKC's season opener against the Houston Rockets would be postponed due to COVID protocols before their true first game of the season in Charlotte the day after Christmas. They would pull of a win over the Hornets, who were surrounded by a lot of hype after their busy offseason. 

Could the Thunder be unexpectedly good again and exceed expectations? 

It quickly became clear that this was a team that would be competitive with a full healthy roster, but not a playoff team as they won just one of their next five games. Either way, this was the first time that OKC had started a season with so much uncertainty in such a long time. With low expectations and no fans in the stands, they really didn't have much to lose. 

While the Thunder did overhaul their roster prior to the start of the season, they still had a solid roster at the beginning of the year. When fully healthy, there's no reason to think they couldn't have been in the race for the play-in tournament. However, we would soon find out that they would go a completely different direction after some unexpected success.