Despite Losing Streak, Thunder Amidst Highest Scoring Month Yet

Teams winning 11% of their games typically don’t have a good offense. Teams winning 11% of their games typically don’t even play watchable basketball. But, for whatever reason, the Oklahoma City Thunder aren’t your typical basketball team,

The Thunder (20-49) have consistently been the NBA’s worst offense this season — posting a 103.1 offensive rating.

The Thunder have some offensive weapons, Josh Giddey is one of the league’s most innovative passers, Lu Dort has had a career year across the board on offense, Tre Mann has shown flashes of a future sixth man of the year contender and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is among the league’s best at attacking the rim. But despite those weapons, OKC has been unable to put it all together and push toward the middle of the pack offensively.

But through eight games in March, with half of its roster out via injury, the Thunder have found something. Having spent the first five months of the season in either 29th or 30th the Thunder are putting together their highest-scoring month this season (111.8 PPG) to move to 26th with a 109.7 offensive rating. This might not seem like a lot — and for just about any other team it wouldn’t be, it would be a sigh of relief — but for OKC this is a step in the right direction. A direction it desperately needed as the regular season winds down.

To figure out how and why the Thunder are having such a good month offensively look no further than Gilgeous-Alexander: OKC’s face of the franchise and a 23-year-old in the midst of the best scoring month of his career.

Since the All-Star break, SGA has averaged 30.3 points, good for seventh in the league. Following a few high-scoring games to close out February and he is averaging 28.8 points per game — the most for any month in his career, minimum five games. As the league’s top scorers are trading 60-point performances he has fallen to 14th in scoring for March.

Not only is he scoring at a career-high clip, but he is also doing so efficiently. SGA is shooting 51.4% over this stretch on nearly 20 attempts per game. With three of the Thunder’s Top-5 scorers sidelined for most of this stretch, it has been impressive to see him stay within his game where most players would look to force the issue and overcompensate for the losses.

Put his performances in March together with Mann (13.4 PPG), Aleksej Pokusevski (12.2) and Darius Bazley (15.8) and you have a core, albeit a small one, of players that look to feature in the organizations plans beyond this season thriving with newfound opportunities.

Now, as you may have remembered this is a team that has won 11% of its games in March — 1-of-9 to be exact — and it’s fairly clear as to why. OKC is surrendering an average of 127 points to opponents in March. In no aspect is the Thunder’s injury list as noticeable as it is on the defensive end.

The Thunder are built on a team defense mentality rather than individual assignments, so losing such a large portion of the rotation has cratered the team’s defensive numbers over this stretch.

With a shorthanded roster, the Thunder will struggle to put together wins no matter how much the offense improves, but the short-term production from the players still playing could be key heading into the offseason.

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