OKC Thunder Sharpshooter Changing Team's Offense

Jaws are dropped around Bricktown as the Oklahoma City Thunder start the 2025-26 campaign with an unblemished resume. An 8-0 start, which marks their best in franchise history. This is through no shortage of adversity. The Bricktown Ballers have missed All-NBA swingman Jalen Williams for all eight games, joining him in street clothes for that same length has been veteran big man Kenrich Williams and rookie guard Nikola Topic. Defensive ace Alex Caruso has missed three games, the same as rising star big man Chet Holmgren. Cason Wallace and Lu Dort have each missed a game each to date.

While all those injuries piled up, sharpshooter Isaiah Joe also began the season in street clothes for the first five games of the season with a knee contusion he suffered in the preseason slate for the Thunder.

He returned to a team that ranked as the worst 3-point shooting squad in the entire NBA. That woeful output was explainable. Not only was Oklahoma City missing their clean looks they typically make, but also the onslaught of injuries they have needed to navigate. They also have history on their side. Last October, the Thunder were 27th in the league from deep before finishing the season as the sixth-best team from downtown percentage-wise.

Since Joe's return, the 3-point marksman is averaging 4.6 attempts a night from beyond the arc and converting at a 48% clip. This has catapulted the Thunder to the No. 3 team in the NBA from 3-point land, shooting the trey ball at a 44% clip in their first two games of the new month.

While this is a small sample size, it is built on the back of a new role for the Arkansas sharpshooter. While Joe is a career 40% shooting from distance, he has never launched the pill with this much confidence. You can not find a single clip of him hesitating or overthinking his decision to shoot the ball. This allows the Thunder to launch wide-open triples as defenses do not have that split second to react and recover to Joe on the outside off the downhill scoring gravity of a player such as superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

However, it is not just the conversion rate or Joe simply hitting his traditional stationary catch-and-shoot jumpers. Instead, the 26-year-old is relocating around the perimiter, curling off screens and capitalizing on DHOs more often in this small sample size. This change in his quality of looks is not only benefiting the Bricktown Ballers in the present day, but is more translatable to future postseason success for Joe if this continues.

The Thunder guard is taking more dribble jumpers per game, while also still relying on his catch-and-shoot bread and butter though this time from further out. On those catch-and-shoot chances, Joe is hitting them at a 46.2% clip. Off the bounce that number goes to 57.1%. While on a small sample size he is shooting 100% coming off screens.

According to cleaning the glass, which filters out garbage time, Joe is stroking triples at a 52% clip, in the mid-range converting 50% of the time while going 3-for-3 at the rim thus far.

All of this offensive success is on the back of his improving defense which leads to not only a hot individual start but more team-wide success. It is much easier to envision a larger role for the young guard come playoff time if these trends continue.