OKC Thunder Should Gain Confidence From Recent Stretch

Out of the NBA All-Star break, the Oklahoma City Thunder have found plenty of success, winning five of their last six games since returning from the mid-winter recess.

This has led the Thunder to a 47-15 record to sit atop the Western Conference for the third straight season with a three-game cushion on the San Antonio Spurs.

Their stint coming out of the All-Star break should not only give the team confidence due to their ability to weather the storm that is the quickly approaching Spurs, who turned in a perfect month of February, but made even more impressive given who all stepped up.

During this six-game sample size, the Thunder played four games without any of their top three offensive creators –– Superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, All-NBA Swingman Jalen Williams and Rising Star Ajay Mitchell –– and yet still the Thunder got enough offense from the likes of Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe and newly acquired Jared McCain, who really stepped up.

Wallace has taken over the past month, including post All-Star break, where he posted a string of three straight games of scoring 20 plus points, including a 27-point outburst in Toronto against the Raptors last week.

The Kentucky product has flashed a new on-ball ability, tapping into his point guard background as a prospect, to be able to burst to the rim and create his own shot off the dribble while also setting the table for his teammates as a playmaker.

Joe has gone on some heaters from beyond the arc in his NBA career, but it has never looked as good as the month of February for the Arkansas sharpshooter. It isn't just his gaudy 50% shooting from beyond the arc in his 12-game stint this past month, to the tune of 14.8 points per game, but it was the quality of triples he was generating.

The marksman launched 86 triples (7.1 per game), which is the highest volume of his season on a nightly basis during the 2025-26 campaign. If Joe did this over the course of an entire season, it would be by far a career-best mark both in volume and, of course, percentage.

Though it goes deeper than the numbers, the relocation ability around the perimeter has allowed Joe to get these shots off, wearing out defenses to free himself up off-ball, sliding into passing windows to take pressure off his on-ball guards, and dominating in dribble hand-offs with his playmaking bigs such as Isaiah Hartenstein and Jaylin Williams.

When Joe has been paired with McCain, those two have allowed the Thunder offense to kick into overdrive, posting 117.1 points per 100 possessions while being a +23.1 together on the floor, which, according to Cleaning the Glass, ranks in the 100th percentile.

The Duke product has logged double-figures in seven of the Thunder's last eight games, which includes a 21-point outing against the Brooklyn Nets, where McCain made nearly 60% of his shots. Since relocating to Oklahoma City, the second-year guard is shooting a jaw-dropping 54% from the mid-range, showing his off-the-bounce ability to create his own shot, getting into the mid-range, using his leverage to bump his defender off their spots, and rising up to cash in the middle of the floor jumpers.

These three outcomes, plus the team being able to lean on the shot creation from their high-post playmakers, namely Hartenstein, should give everyone confidence that this Thunder squad can be better equipped to handle life in the NBA playoffs this go around even better on the offensive end than even their title team did a year ago.