Why the Thunder suddenly look beatable after historic start

It feels like just yesterday that much of the NBA-discussing world was wondering whether the Oklahoma City Thunder were not only about to smash the league’s all-time record for wins in a single season, but whether the defending NBA champions’ two-way dominance had become so all-consuming and so inescapable that it would lead even teams with title aspirations of their own to just punt on the pursuit.

It feels like just yesterday, but it wasn’t. It was in the Long, Long Ago of Three Weeks Back. The Before Time — the era when the gravest crisis in Oklahoma City was the Thunder losing a second game, this one to a just-returned alien.

But a funny thing happened on the way to history: The Thunder lost a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. And a SIXTH — to the Charlotte Hornets, of all teams, in what was, by some reckonings, one of the most surprising blowout results in decades.

IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / REUTERS

Suddenly, a team that was on pace to sprint past 73 wins has been playing .500 ball for the better part of a month. And it came vanishingly close to falling south of that border on Wednesday, too — needing a fourth-quarter comeback and some Shai Gilgeous-Alexander heroics just to hold off the Utah Jazz, owners of a 12-24 record and the NBA’s worst defense, at home.

Wins are wins, and you don’t have to apologize for taking them where they come. They aren’t all created equally, though — and narrowly avoiding another slip-up didn’t do much to quell the concerns of those who’ve spent the last few weeks wondering how what had previously looked like such a historic team can suddenly look so humble.

Thunder swingman Jalen Williams offered a pretty balanced take on that following the narrow escape:

“I think everything’s about perspective,” Williams said. “This is going to sound cocky, but the last three years, we win so much that when we have a normal, human stretch of losing a game or two that we shouldn’t have lost, the world freaks out. [...] Like, we’re not superheroes. We have human moments. We get physically and mentally tired throughout the season. And I feel like that kind of showed, just in that stretch, and that’s something that we just get to work on, get better with.”

It’s a dramatic shift in tone from the “Are they going to win 75 games???” talk that some of us engaged in, but the man’s got some points. (And, to be fair: It’s not like he was the one putting the 2025-26 Thunder next to the 2015-16 Warriors.)

Since the start of the 2023-24 season, nobody has more wins (156) or a higher winning percentage (.772) than Oklahoma City. When a team wins more than three-fourths of the time, there aren’t exactly a whole lot of opportunities to get used to it losing consecutive games — which the Thunder have done twice in the last three weeks after doing it twice all of last season — let alone experiencing an extended stretch of malaise. When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression; when you’re accustomed to a 60- or 70-win pace, .500 ball feels like a crisis.

NBA Cup hangover?

The “physically and mentally tired” thing might have some legs. On this week’s episode of The Big Number, Tom Haberstroh and I looked into whether teams, like the Thunder, that make the semifinals of the NBA Cup experience a “hangover” in the weeks following their trips to Las Vegas …

… and while the sample size is still small, the number of games those Vegas teams have played lately isn’t. Wednesday’s win over the Jazz marked Oklahoma City’s 12th game in 21 days since the end of the tournament — a stretch that has included four back-to-backs. Nine NBA teams have played a dozen games in that three-week span, including all four semifinalists (the Knicks, Spurs, Thunder and Magic), with a combined record of 53-55 — a .491 winning percentage). By contrast, the 10 teams that have played either nine or 10 games in that same timeframe have gone 55-44 — a .556 winning percentage.

Your mileage may vary on just how much you think a couple of extra games’ worth of miles over a couple of weeks add up. It might show up, though, in the legs on your jumper, where a Thunder team that was splashing 38.1% of its 3-point shots through its 24-1 start, fifth-best in the NBA, has dropped down to 31.8% since its NBA Cup semifinal loss, fifth-worst in the league in that span.

It’s been a contagious cold snap for a Thunder offense that ranked fourth in offensive efficiency through 25 games and has dropped to 18th since, with rotation mainstays Cason Wallace, Luguentz Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe all shooting below 40% from the field over the past three weeks, and SGA, Wallace, Wiggins and Alex Caruso all under 30% from 3-point land.

Injury issues

The absence of starting center Isaiah Hartenstein, who’s missed the last six games with a right calf strain, hurts, too. With him on the floor, the Thunder grab offensive rebounds at a top-10 rate. With him on the sideline, they perform like the worst offensive rebounding team in the league — a particular bummer when there are more misses to corral than there used to be. (OKC dropping from a top-five defensive rebounding team through its 24-1 start to 16th in clearing the defensive boards during this lull hasn’t helped, either.)

Some of those misses have been coming off the right hand of Williams, who began his ascent as Gilgeous-Alexander’s running buddy two seasons ago and cemented himself as a cornerstone in his own right last season, earning All-Star, All-NBA and All-Defensive honors and authoring an iconic 40-point performance in the NBA Finals to help propel the Thunder to the championship. After missing the first 19 games of the season rehabilitating following offseason surgery on his right wrist, though, Williams has struggled to recover his shooting touch.