Oklahoma City Thunder: 3 reasons the season is over

2. No depth

I really don’t feel good about writing this. Alex Abrines and Jerami Grant are fine basketball players, but the Thunder simply don’t have the depth to compete with the Western Conference elite.

Patrick Patterson, once known as the “plus/minus god” of the Toronto Raptors, was supposed to be the glue that held the Thunder lineups together. Every team in today’s NBA wants a big man who can defend in the paint and shoot from deep that it can plug into any lineup, and Patterson fits the bill perfectly.

While Patterson played all 82 games of the regular season for the first time in his career, he played a career low in minutes and shot his worst percentage from the field (39.8 percent).

The silver lining that OKC’s young pieces have plenty of time to get better and mesh with Westbrook is a nice consolation, but not very comforting given the initial expectations for this roster.