Last Week: (L) to PHI, (L) to GSW, (W) over LAL, (L) to GSW
There was a lot of talk this week among the national media about the Oklahoma City Thunder being the next edition of “The Process” and embarrassingly trying to lose every game. They may not care about wins and losses, and they absolutely want to maximize their draft pick. But they are absolutely not blatantly tanking in a shocking way.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a fringe All-Star player, and he is getting a full workload. The Thunder have been competitive in multiple games, including pushing the Philadelphia 76ers and Golden State Warriors before beating the preseason contender Los Angeles Lakers. If they’re supposed to win nine games or less they’ll have to stop playing so well.
Scares Me: That SGA is wasting his prime. After defending the Thunder, it is obvious that they will finish with a bottom-5 record, if not bottom-3. This team wants and needs to add more blue-chip talent, and the draft is the absolute best way for a small market team to do that. Yet they have a star player right now who is wasting years of his prime for a very bad team. Does that make him antsy in a few years? Does it make him antsy now? He signed a maximum rookie extension with no opt-outs this summer, so there are no warning signs, but it would still hang out at the back of my mind if I were a Thunder fan.