Breaking Down The Defensive Success Of The OKC Thunder

Last season, the Oklahoma City Thunder were in the top half of the NBA nearly the entire year in defensive rating despite facing injuries and being the youngest team in the league. In fact, they were in the top ten for a good portion of the season as well.

This season, Oklahoma City is trending in the same direction as head coach Mark Daigneault’s schemes and philosophies continue to work on that end of the floor. While the offensive side of the ball may be inconsistent at times due to the inexperience of the roster, the effort and buy-in on defense is apparent.

To this point in the 2022-23 campaign, the Thunder are sixth in the league in defensive rating. They’re allowing just 106.7 points per 100 possessions through seven games.

There’s a number of factors that have led to this high level of defense, starting with being disruptive. Oklahoma City is 2nd in steals (9.6), 5th in deflections (17.9) and 9th in blocks (6.0) per game. This has resulted in an extremely high number of turnovers, as the Thunder force the most in the league at 18.1 per contest. They also lead the league in charges taken.

Furthermore, Oklahoma City’s opponents average just 23 assists per game, which is seventh fewest in the league. The Thunder have been great at overall forcing takeaways and disrupting the flow of the opposing offense. On the flip side, offense translates to defense as the Thunder have taken care of the ball on that end, which has resulted in them letting up the second fewest points off turnovers and third fewest points in transition per game this season.

Whether it’s pace or defensive scheme, teams don’t get many field goal attempts against the Thunder either. So far this season, they’ve allowed just 87.7 field goal attempts per game, which is the 11th fewest in the NBA. Even when teams do get shots off, Oklahoma City has been great about making sure their shot is either blocked or altered. On top of being top ten in blocks, the Thunder are third in contested shots this season. This has resulted in OKC being in the top half of the league in opponents’ field goal percentage (46.1%).

More importantly, the Thunder have really made life difficult on the perimeter for their opponents, forcing a 32.4% rate from beyond the arc this season for the opposition. This is top-five in the NBA to this point, which is obviously critical in a 3-point driven league.

All things considered, there’s still room for improvement on this end of the floor for Oklahoma City. Interior defense has been a struggle this season, which makes sense when considering the roster composition. The Thunder lack a dominant big, with Aleksej Pokusevki being the only 7-footer on the active roster.

The Thunder are allowing 53.4 points in the paint per game, which is 26th in the league. While they’re generating steals, deflections and blocks, teams are still scoring at will inside against them. With that in mind, given the nature of the modern NBA you’d rather give up a high number of points in the paint than triples any day.

On that note, the Thunder’s defensive rebounding numbers are starting to slip, which could also be improved on. They are top 15 in defensive boards and rebound percentage, but are still allowing 16.7 second chance points per game which is bottom five in the league.

Individually, Oklahoma City has two players (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams) that average two or more steals per game and another three (Lu Dort, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Tre Mann) that average at least one. In terms of blocks, Darius Bailey leads the team with 1.4 per contest, while Gilgeous-Alexander averages 1.3 and Aleksej Pokusevski produces 1.1 per game.

Both individually and as a team, the Oklahoma City Thunder have been fantastic on the defensive end this season. Combine that with the offensive firepower of Gilgeous-Alexander and this team might be better than expected.