Appreciating the Oklahoma City Thunder and their league-leading 5-man lineup

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s fab five, led by Chris Paul, has been the NBA’s best five-man lineup this year. But how will they fare in the playoffs?

With three-fourths of the regular season in the books, the 40-24 Oklahoma City Thunder have outperformed expectations more than any other team in the NBA. With preseason odds at 32.5 wins (Basketball Reference), OKC is on pace for 51 wins and a fifth-place finish in the loaded Western Conference.

So how are they proving so many experts wrong?

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The Thunder have the NBA’s best five-man lineup, and no one saw it coming. Of the 50 five-man lineups to play 150 or more minutes together this season, OKC’s lineup of Chris Paul, Dennis Schröder, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, and Steven Adams have a Net Rating of +29.9 (NBA Advanced Stats). That’s not a typo, it’s just ludicrous.

To put +29.9 into context, only four other five-man lineups are even above +15: New Orleans’ new Zion-led core, Phoenix’s Booker-led core, Milwaukee’s Giannis and company, and Toronto’s weirdly great Lowry-free group.

OKC’s fab five is lapping everyone else. They score whenever they want (127.9 Offensive Rating, first in NBA), and then they lock down opponents (98.0 defensive rating, seventh in NBA). To make things even more fun, they have two of the more underrated players in the league.

Chris Paul is one of the smartest basketball players to ever live, and he would like for everyone to know that he is in fact not washed. The 34-year-old Point God is 15th in the league in Box Plus Minus and 27th in Minutes Played (Basketball Reference).

The often injured Danilo Gallinari has stayed healthy (25th in box plus-minus, 91st in minutes played). Of all the players who take at least half of their shots from 3-point range, he is eighth in true shooting (61.1 percent). Fragile or not, you just don’t find 6’10” sharpshooters like that.

But what about their playoff prospects?

NBA analysts love to talk about all the things that “go out the window” when the playoffs arrive: team depth, pace of play, late-game execution, etc. So how will the shift to playoff basketball affect the Oklahoma City Thunder?

As for depth, the Thunder have their top-five, one of the league’s best backup bigs (Nerlens Noel), and not much else. Aside from Noel, only five others have played regularly and only one (Abdel Nader) has played above replacement level. Some teams have had playoff success while playing seven guys; if OKC can pull it off they will be dangerous.

Chris Paul runs a deliberate Thunder offense that ranks 21st in pace. In a series with the Rockets or Clippers, the Thunder would have to adjust less to a drop in pace than their opponent.

When games slow down, late-game play-making can make or break a team’s entire season. Thankfully, for OKC, Chris Paul has been otherworldly in the clutch. He takes shots (third in the NBA with 86 clutch field goal attempts) and he makes shots (sixth in field goal percentage among the 55 players with at least 40 clutch attempts).  Don’t want to let him get a clean look late in the game? He’ll take a breath and shoot 93.5 percent from the free throw line (second in NBA among those with at least 20 clutch attempts [NBA Advanced Stats]).

This year’s Oklahoma City Thunder are not just a surprisingly good regular season team. They also seem surprisingly built for the playoffs. But, like so many other teams, the looming question is about how to defend the so-called “unstoppable” players, big wings who are a threat from everywhere on the floor. Particularly LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Luka Doncic, and Paul George.

Can Paul or Gilgeous-Alexander play above their size and slow any of them down? Can Noel, quick for his size, stay in front of them enough? Can Darius Bazley, Luguentz Dort, Terrance Ferguson, or Hamidou Diallo (all 21 or younger) step up in big moments? Unless OKC just leans on their fab five and manages to outscore everyone, their wing defense may determine their fate.