Oklahoma City Thunder: 5 goals for Patrick Patterson in 2017-18
1. Average double-digit scoring off the bench
The Thunder’s rank in points per game (10th) does not reflect how bad the bench was last season. The points per game rank could be attributed to the fact that Russell Westbrook’s usage rate was the most ever in NBA history.
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This year, Westbrook has help on offense with George and Melo. Patterson will also help out when he comes off the bench. In the second unit, at least one of the Big Three should stay on the court for some time to help out the offense. Abrines will be a big factor for the Thunder in terms of bench scoring because he could be the shooter that everybody thinks the Thunder needs.
For Patterson, he will have to be a double-digit scorer coming off the bench. He has only done this one time in his career in 2012-13, when he played for Houston and Sacramento and averaged 10.4 points per game for the whole season. In that season he started 38 games for the Houston Rockets, which is probably why he averaged that many points that year.
This year though, he will have to average double-digits coming off the bench because there is again not that much offense coming from the bench. No Thunder player averaged more than 20 points per game last year other than Westbrook, who averaged 31.6 points per game, and no player other than Enes Kanter averaged more than eight points per game for the Thunder coming off the bench.
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Patterson came off a Toronto Raptors team that had two players score at least 20 points per game in DeMar DeRozan (27.3 per game) and Kyle Lowry (22.4). They also had Terrence Ross (10.4), Cory Joseph (9.3) and Norman Powell (8.4) all score eight points or more coming off the bench. Patterson is stepping into a role where he will have a bigger impact, so double-digit scoring will not be an unreachable goal for him.