OKC Thunder's Depth And Youth Proving to be Regular Season Benefit

The Oklahoma City Thunder advanced to 10-4 on the season after taking down the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night. This boosted them to the first team in the Western Conference to ten wins.

Though it's only a 14-game sample size, the Thunder has been one of the top teams in the league, and they just rounded out five straight wins in the span of seven days. As it stands now, they're statistically near the top of the league. A big reason the Thunder is able to endure a stretch like five games in seven days is because of a combination of depth and youth.

This showed in one of the Thunder's matchups against the Warriors, as the bench was a huge part of them being able to score plenty offensively. When the two teams went to overtime in their second matchup, the Thunder was able to seamlessly bring in fresh legs without taking a hit of production.

It was understood ahead of the season that the Thunder was going to have improved depth, but this level of impact significantly raises the ceiling of the team on the season.

Also, the Thunder is the second-youngest team in the league. Despite this, they play with maturity, as head coach Mark Daigneault alluded to after the win. They get the benefits of being a young team while playing mature basketball and holding themself to the same standard as a team full of veterans.

"We showed great maturity, great discipline to the 0-and-0 mindset," Daigneault said. "Our execution of the game plan early really set the tone for the game and got us a nice grip on the game early. That was a byproduct of maturity."

While the Thunder's early-season efficiency might not last, and the win streak will eventually come to an end, racking up these early-season wins will be really, really important come the end of the season when a playoff race is underway.

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