Three Hot OKC Thunder Takes Entering Next Season

Oklahoma City has done the unthinkable three years in a row now. From destroying preseason expectations and win totals, to winning MVPs and championships, it feels like the Thunder have been a hot bed for hot takes.

This Thunder team and organization has risen up the ranks rapidly, and now will look to protect its crown and repeat as champions. It won’t be easy, though, and there will certainly be a handful of storylines that come out of nowhere.

Here are three hot takes as we enter into an exciting season of Thunder basketball — ones that could be storylines by the season’s end:

Oklahoma City wins 70 games.

This take is only crazy because it has only been done twice — if anybody can pull it off in the modern era, it’s this Thunder team. For starters, they return every rotational player from a 68-win team a season ago, the same team coming off an NBA championship. They also enter the season with a clean bill of health — outside of Jalen Williams getting surgery on his wrist directly after the Finals, nobody is nursing any injuries.

This team has proven over the last few years that the depth of the roster and the system that Mark Daigneault runs is proven to be able to sustain winning even with an injury or two. Of course, to win 70 games you’ll have to have some injury luck and stay relatively healthy, but the Thunder had a handful of key players go down a season ago and still almost achieved the feat. It won’t be easy, especially with the competition out West. But if any team can do it, it’s the team that’s still categorized as very young, hungry, and coming off a historic season looking for more.

Cason Wallace finishes the season as a starter.

This isn’t a fault to anyone on the team — Oklahoma City has an elite starting five. But Cason Wallace might ascend to a new level this year, and he could be too good to ignore. We saw the Thunder turn to him often in the playoffs and the NBA Finals, and it could be more of the same next season.

Wallace is one of the forgotten rising young stars in the NBA, and he’s already one of the best perimeter defenders the league has to offer. He has been a better shooter than what was advertised out of college, and his offensive bag has serious flashes. He has often been compared to a Jrue Holiday type of player, and that’s more than a fair comparison — Wallace is a game changer in the NBA. If anyone goes down with an injury this season, Wallace might not give that spot back if he’s a fill-in starter.

His name was floating around this summer as an under-the-radar Team USA player moving forward. More people are starting to take notice of his special skillset. There’s a real chance he could slide into a starting role at some point this season for the Thunder.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads the team in 3-point percentage.

This might be the craziest take yet, but are we ever going to doubt Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s offseason improvement? Ever since arriving in Oklahoma City, he has added something new and obvious to his bag every summer. The offseason improvement has always been crystal clear with Gilgeous-Alexander — he comes back to training camp with a specific area that’s much improved.

A season ago, we saw him start to take 3-pointers in bunches — something we haven’t seen from him before. He increased his volume and really started to experiment with his outside shot. Some nights were better than others, and the consistency wasn’t always there, but that was the first step in SGA’s outside shooting evolution. He began adapting to the modern NBA’s style of 3-points attempts, and found ways to implement it into his game.

He’s a master of his own craft, and there’s nothing preventing him from mastering another aspect of his game. During the 2020 season, where he played just 35 games, he shot an impressive 41.8% from 3-points range. As someone who has watched his rapid improvement every offseason, it wouldn’t be surprising to see his 3-points evolution continue this season — where he could be the Thunder’s most accurate outside shooter.