This Is The Greatest Rebuild The NBA Has Ever Seen

This Is The Greatest Rebuild The NBA Has Ever Seen

In the 2020 to 21 season shortly after OKC moved on from the Westbrook and Paul George era the team won just 22 games they were the second worst team in the Western Conference and it was expected they were starting a brand new rebuild after all but fast forward a couple

Years later and now they’ve been at the top or near the top of the conference one of the NBA’s most elite teams not just that but from now until the year 2030 they have a whopping 15 first round picks and 22 second round picks not all

Of them will convey cuz some of them are protected but even then nine first round picks are guaranteed to be theirs that’s astounding they’re contending for the championship but also have a massive amount of assets to set themselves up for the future or the potential to package those picks for another star to

Top it off they’re currently the youngest team in the league with an average age of 23.1 years old the Oklahoma City Thunder literally have everything you could ask for but just how do they get into this ridiculously awesome situation how do they construct a roster that’s able to compete among

The very best but are simultaneously the youngest team in the league with a boatload of assets they’re in the best position out of any team in the NBA how’s it going folks my name’s Andy and today let’s talk about the greatest rebuilding Story the NBA has ever ever

Seen something that a lot of young rebuilding teams struggle with is they got a lot of young players who are all trying to be the main guy it makes sense I mean a lot of young teams have players who were once highly talented prospects so they expect to become a star they

Expect to get the ball all the time because they want to be the franchise player but when you have too many of these guys it may lead to a power struggle within the team when you have have a bunch of young guys fighting for touches trying to get their own shots

That will lead to problems down the road for the Oklahoma City Thunder however there is a clearly defined best player on this team and he’s been their best player for years now sheay gilis Alexander on a team full of young players he’s the leader and no one’s

Going to question him getting the final shots or shooting the ball too much because everyone on the team everyone in the world knows he’s far better than any other player on this roster there is a clearly defined hierarchy of players and he’s at the very top compared to many other rebuilding teams

Where you’re kind of unsure and you have young guys fighting for that top spot that’s not the case with this team however like most other young teams they do have a plethora of guys who are you know the second third and fourth options but when they’re asked to take a step

Back and let the main guy of this franchise handle it they will no questions asked with that being said let’s go back a bit and see how this Began while the Thunder did get a decent haul in return for Westbrook we’ve yet to see the full impact of these picks that they have in their Arsenal it was actually the Paul George trade to the Clippers that created the foundation in which this new era is built upon in this

Particular trade the Thunder not only received Shay in return but also the ever so important clipper 2022 unprotected first round pick they eventually us this pick to draft Jaylen Williams Jaylen Williams ultimately became a central piece of this franchise that’s two core pieces of their team

Received in one trade in addition to all the other picks and future assets that are yet to be seen at the time this happened this wasn’t necessarily a bad trade for the Clippers Kawai had already joined the Clippers and wanted them to make a push for Paul George so that they

Can have the chance to contend right away Shay in his rookie year with the Clippers showed promise just like in his lone season at Kentucky you could tell he had a unique skill set for a point guard nobody else played like him so there were questions of if his play

Style could actually work in the modern NBA a point guard who’s bigger in terms of height not exactly a three-point shooter nor a natural passer in a way he scores almost like a small forward the Clippers were unsure if he could Elevate his play style to an All-Star caliber

Level and with a new goal of competing right away they did not have time to wait I don’t fault the clippers for trading him away even at the time he wasn’t seen as the main guy in this deal it was all those picks that attracted

OKC in doing this trade in fact Sam pry did not even want to make this trade to begin with they never wanted to get rid of George the I know that he had he he had used the term Mutual I don’t I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that because that

Would infer that we we were wanting to to trade Paul George which I think most people would agree that that probably wasn’t on the top of our offseason priority list the players have the freedom to be able to to talk and recruit and there’s nothing limiting

That and that um changed the game for us Paul George requested a trade and in situations like this usually the player has a lot of Leverage in where he goes but prey still managed to get a massive hall for him even if shade didn’t work

Out they’d still be in a great spot due to everything else they got back it just shows how important having a great GM is especially one who’s backed by the full support of the organization this leads to our next topic the MVP over there is Sam

Prey he the MVP this guy’s eye for talent he drafted KD Russ Jeff Green Sergey Bacher Reggie Jackson and the list goes on and on and on did you know that Sam pry is the longest tenure GM in the NBA with Greg papovich transitioning to become the Spurs

President pry now holds the record for the current longest tenure GM at 17 plus years he’s been in the business since 2007 and he blows all of his peers out of the water right now no other team has a GM that comes close to his longevity after the unfortunate Rel location of

The Seattle SuperSonics it was a depressing way for a city to lose their team as one city wept in sadness it was the start of a new era an era in Oklahoma City that immediately saw success right from the get-go prey and the organization established a winning culture every single player they drafted

In the lottery in this 2-year span turned out to be MVP level players franchise changing guys who turned out to be this generation’s greatest superstars to have these guys lead your franchise in a brand new city it was surreal you could say OKC fans are spoiled the chance to experience such

Legendary Superstars right when the team moved here that’s an opportunity that some teams have never experienced in their entire team’s history because of this the team and the city have the expectations to win when you think of the Thunder you think of winning every player that arrives to this team has

That expectation to help this team win because they’ve gotten used to OKC being a successful team you know teams draft Superstars all the time but what separates a good rebuild from a bad one is how the team surrounds their main stars over time pry has drafted great supporting players in sergy Baka Steven

Adams Reggie Jackson along with trades to bring in guys who can Shore their weaknesses and fill in the gaps perhaps not all of his trades were perfect and some would say OKC missed out on a championship or two had they kept this this big three together even so they

Still competed for such a long time this marked a significant era in Thunder history and this mentality has carried over to the next generation of players prior to OKC making a massive jump if we go back to the previous year 2022 to 23 this is when things started

To turn around although it was a slow process so what exact happened if you recall the Thunder were supposed to be tanking do you remember towards the end of that season the Thunder were Within Reach of the playoffs but coincidentally Shay mysteriously entered the health and

Safety protocols and he did not play in several games during their push to the playoffs the rumors were the Thunder sat him out on purpose to hopefully lose the next few games to get a higher lottery pick in hindsight it kind of makes sense we found out that they were reaching for

Case Wallace a highly touted Prospect and he wanted to be drafted by OKC as well it was a match made in heaven and the Thunder were close to getting a top 10 pick that year but by making the play in tournaments at the end of the season

They were just slightly Out Of Reach to draft Cas Wallace eventually they got him anyway by trading up with the mevs and basically preseason predictions had the Thunder winning just 24 games yet they shattered those predictions by winning 40 of course the biggest outlier was Shea’s development not even the most

Sophisticated projection models had him reaching this level this quickly he went from being a French All-Star candidate to a legitimate superstar in the span of a single off season what stands out most about sheay is his consistency it seems like he rarely if ever has a bad game

For a guy of his age to play with this much Poise that’s super impressive he’s a special player what also surprised a lot of folks was how seamlessly Jaylen Williams fit into this team that season it was his rookie year and his maturity his steady consistent play style fit

Well within the theme of this young team Josh giddy also made a noticeable leap and became the playmaker they needed it wasn’t just Shay’s insane development the entire team became better together and played well with each other um he has uh a core belief system and I

I 100% agree with it him instilling those things in us when we were a 15 wins team to when we were 22- win team till now it’s made it easier for us to grow you know out of timeouts out of you know you know when we run our first play

Of the game or whatever it is um he’s always drawing something up that’s good that that’s really good and and effective and he he understands how to get guys going um I think for a coach to have a certain relationship with every player is rare it’s hard to coach it

Like a young team and I think he’s done a really good job of that and he’s been able to relate to us so Mark dagnal joined this team as the head coach back in 2020 at the time he was a relatively unknown guy plus it was during the

Pandemic so not many folks were paying attention to basketball at all it wasn’t until recently that Mark dagnal has been getting more and more recognition for being one of the NBA’s brightest young coaches for those who don’t know he’s been with the organization for a long time actually and even coached OKC’s

G-league team for 5 years before coming up to the Thunder like how every team has young project players that they develop over time Mark dealt was kind of a project coach for years pry recognized his intuition for the game but more importantly his ability to relate and

Empathize with every player on his team you heard it from the players themselves they have an immense amount of praise for him Sam pry won said as we reposition our franchise for future sustainable success we want to remain Cutting Edge and forward thinking I can’t think of someone better than

Mark this year has been a revelation with ched hongren suiting up for the first time we thought he would take a while to get accustomed to the NBA game it didn’t take him very long now every player on this team made another jump this year even if it’s not reflected in

Their numbers Lou Dort for example he was scoring a lot more when the Thunder were bad but now that he’s taking less shots and being more picky with his shots he’s more efficient than he’s ever been also credit to this team’s much better spacing Jaylen Williams has

Gotten more of the playmaking duties now expanding on his ever so successful rookie campaign as the NBA moves towards flexibility and versatility the Thunder are at the Forefront of this revolution all of of their guys can shoot dribble pass finish they can play multiple positions they can guard multiple

Positions this creates a dynamic offense where there’s very little stagnation and a lot of efficient shots are taken when you have five players who are threats to score from every single spot on the floor they’re bound to have a great offense it also resulted in OKC taking

The second most wideopen shots per game right behind the Indiana Pacers the only time the offense slows down is is when Shay has the ball and tries to go oneon-one that’s a good thing though because you want Shay to do that he’s such an efficient lethal scorer out of

All players who average at least 25 points a game he is number one in true shooting percentage at over 65% plus with OKC playing at a very fast pace you need your Superstar to be able to slow the game down control the pace of the game and maybe draw some fouls

Here and there if you watch him play you wouldn’t think he’s still so young he plays like a seasoned veteran very methodical and cerebral the perfect leader for this young team over the years as the Thunder realized sheay would become the franchise Superstar they acquired players who could fit

Alongside him I mentioned how OKC takes the second most wideopen shots per game that’s because their spacing is incredible surrounded by highquality shooters that helps Shay’s game tremendously it gives him so much space to play his own game in particular his isolation plays Shay is fifth in the NBA

In terms of frequency of running isolations with over 1th of his possessions and he’s scoring 1.22 points per possession from them higher than any of the top five ISO players plus it seems like almost every player on this team is a decent shooter speaking of which there were questions

Of can Chad actually produce in his rookie year isn’t he too skinny won’t he get abused by other centers due to his lanky frame well he has crushed all the doubts he’s holding opponents to 58% shooting within 5T of the basket for comparison that’s the same percentage as

Rudy goar it’s safe to say he has excelled beyond our expectations on defense offensively he fits so well you combine the team’s spacing plus Shay’s gravity Chad has room to flourish overall if you’re a brand new NBA fan and you don’t know which team to follow the Thunder might be your team

They’re just so fun to watch and they’re so young and energetic with a coach that’s unorthodox and likes to adapt and try new things they’re changing the game with this new wave of NBA Talent it’s a great time to be a fan of the Thunder and it just

Shows how much it matters to have a competent front office and Coach thank you all so much for watching let me know your thoughts on where do you see this Thunder team going in the next few seasons do you see them making a run to the title I feel like they have

The pieces to do so it just takes some more experience and development and I think they’ll be right there anyway I hope you all enjoyed the video and of course as always I’ll see you next time Peace

It wasn’t too long ago when the Oklahoma City Thunder traded away their stars and were ready to start a new era. But in the blink of an eye, they are now back as one of the NBA’s most elite teams. How did they rebuild so quickly and effectively? Enjoy!

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