Josh Giddey is Peaking at the Perfect Time for Oklahoma City
The Thunder's forgotten guard is playing his best basketball of the season down the stretch.
Over the last handful of weeks, Josh Giddey’s reemergence has been hard to ignore. The sample size has grown enough to recognize his improvement and not chalk it up to one or two occurrences against lesser competition. He looks confident, decisive, and like the player Oklahoma City envisioned him being.
Coming into this season, he was one of the key pieces of the Thunder’s roster moving forward. Giddey’s first two seasons in the NBA were promising, and he seemed poised for a big year three jump.
The addition of Chet Holmgren and the ascension of Jalen Williams had Giddey lost in the shuffle, though. It’s hard to adjust your role in the NBA on the fly, and on a winning team, every little mistake was magnified. He seemed to stick out in the rotation as a player that struggled on both ends of the floor. While there were certainly plenty of overreactions, there’s no denying that his play dropped off. And he would be the first to admit it, too.
But during the season’s most important stretch, it seems like Giddey has his swagger back. And that’s the best thing that could happen for this Thunder team right now. He’s shooting the ball with confidence, playing to his strengths in transition, and learning how to operate within the flow of the game. He’s returning to the form of someone who was widely regarded as a talented piece with loads of potential.
In Oklahoma City’s thrilling win over the Pelicans on Wednesday night, Giddey’s improvement was on display. Quite frankly, he’s the reason the Thunder won. With Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hobbled and the offense cold from long range, he stepped up when the team needed him most. The third-year guard turned in his best performance of the season with 25 points, nine rebounds and four assists on 10-of-14 shooting. He drilled five triples, too.
“Any time any player sees the ball go in the rim, you start to gain confidence and the rim starts to become bigger,” Giddey said about his recent stretch. “Those shots start to feel easier. Just taking the right ones, seeing different looks with bigs guarding me and guards guarding me and just trying to take what the defense gives.
“Just keep shooting with confidence, my guys trust me and my coaches trust me to step out and shoot it. Just have to continue to be confident with it whether they go in or not.”
Over the last 10 games, Giddey is averaging 15.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 5.2 assists with just 1.9 turnovers. He’s a +7.7 on the floor, which only trails Holmgren. If you expand the sample size back longer to post-All Star break numbers, it’s still impressive. He’s shooting 52.6% from the floor and 40% from 3-point range in 17 games. This feels like a real stretch of solid basketball and not just flukey statistics.
“There’s ups and downs in shooting, there’s a lot of variance in shooting,” Mark Daigneault said following Giddey’s big night. “But I give him a lot of credit, he has worked hard on it. He has had the schemes of people leaving him open, which I think is a really difficult thing especially for somebody that’s a developing shooter and he has just kind of stuck with it through the ups and downs of the season.
“For him to have a night like that shooting the ball, I’m really, really happy for him."
He has always been a solid transition player and seems to be putting that to use more consistently. The head scratching plays are starting to feel far and few between and his floater has gone in more times than not.
Before the All Star break, it felt like the national media would point to Giddey as the weak link in Oklahoma City’s rotation. He’s starting to turn the corner, though, which would be exactly what the Thunder needs. His rebounds are trending upwards, he’s competing on both ends of the floor, and he looks like he’s just playing basketball again. There’s not much overthinking anymore.
“He guarded (Trey) Murphy for much of the second half and played the entire fourth quarter,” Daigneault noted after the game. “I didn’t see the need to sub him for defense because of the way he was competing on that end.
“I thought he was a real two-end player tonight. That was huge for us, we don’t win that game without the efforts he gave on defense and obviously the shot making on offense.”
Only time will tell if this run is sustainable. But Giddey is peaking at the right time and he’s helping Oklahoma City win games. His reemergence could be an underrated storyline down the stretch.
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