One of the most surprising teams in the NBA thus far this season has been the Oklahoma City Thunder. They are currently in second place in the Western Conference, improving their record to 23-9 with a victory over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night.
That 127-123 win will put the Thunder on the map in the eyes of many non-believers. The Celtics entered the game on a six-game winning streak and Tuesday’s defeat was only their seventh on the season. Their .788 win percentage is currently the best in the NBA.
Such a young team experiencing this amount of success is rare in the NBA. The other top teams in the league have spent a few years building things up. The Thunder have done the same thing, but they are still lacking in the experience department.
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Davis Bertans, who is 31, is the only player on the roster not in their 20s. Their oldest rotation player, Kenrich Williams, is only 29. This is a team loaded with high-upside talent that is ready to announce their presence.
There is still some skepticism surrounding the Thunder given how youthful their roster is. None of their key players have experienced much winning in the NBA as they spent years tanking and piling up losses and draft capital.
While unorthodox, that route is paying off. The team performs like a veteran-laden group, putting individual success aside for the sake of the team winning games. One of those young players, Chet Holmgren, shared a bold comment about the team’s goals heading forward.
“It says that we’re really playing together and we’re prioritizing winning over anything else,” Holmgren said. “But as far as long term, it doesn’t really prove anything, I guess you could say, or it doesn’t kind of satisfy anybody.
“We know we have a long ways to go. We’re at 32 games into the season, so we still have 50 games left. We got a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of lessons we’ve already learned from that we’ve got to kind of keep in the back of our mind.”
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While there will certainly be some bumps in the road, as even head coach Mark Daigneault is young at only 38 years old and in his fourth season, this looks like a special group. The hot start has looked sustainable as they have a star in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leading the way with excellent complimentary players in Jalen Williams, Josh Giddey and Holmgren around him.
Some people are waiting for the Thunder to make a trade for an established star to get them over the hump. However, this is a group that is already loaded with star-level talent that can separate itself from other contenders with the chemistry and continuity they have been building.
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