With a roster virtually identical to last season’s championship team, the Thunder are counting on improvement to come from internal development of young players. One of those players is 21-year-old guard Cason Wallace, who may develop into a more efficient scoring threat in his third season, writes Rylan Stiles of Sports Illustrated.
Wallace’s elite defense helped him remain an important part of the rotation, but his shooting took a step backward. After connecting at 49.1% from the field and 41.9% from three-point range as a rookie, those numbers dropped to 47.4% and 35.6% in his second season. The three-point impact was most obvious from the corners, where he declined by about 10 percent.
Stiles points out that Wallace found other ways to get buckets, ranking in the 81st percentile as a cutter at 1.463 points per possession and adding 1.222 points per possession as the pick-and-roll man in guard-to-guard screening sets. Stiles believes Wallace is too talented for his shooting percentages to remain low and expects him to bounce back this season.
There’s more from the Northwest Division:
- In a separate story, Stiles lists the five Thunder lineups he’s most looking forward to watching. While Oklahoma City can go heavy on offense or defense, Stiles believes the five-man group of Wallace, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren will be its best overall option. Stiles also expects big things from Nikola Topic, who sat out last season after ACL surgery, and believes he’ll thrive as a point guard if he’s surrounded by shooters.
- A trade with Boston brought Georges Niang back to the Jazz after a four-year absence, so Trent Wood of The Deseret News examined how much Niang has changed during that time. Wood notes that Niang put up the best scoring numbers of his career after Atlanta acquired him from Cleveland at last season’s trade deadline and reunited him with former Utah coach Quin Snyder. In 28 games with the Hawks, Niang averaged 12.1 PPG while shooting 44.1% from the field and 41.3% from beyond the arc. Wood expects Niang to provide a consistent three-point threat for the Jazz while serving as a mentor to young wings Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams and Ace Bailey.
- Now that Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez have full ownership of the Timberwolves and WNBA’s Lynx, they’re focusing their changes on the business side of the organizations, according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic (Twitter link).
More game time, tougher defensive match ups tend to take a little of the effiency away. Teams scheming a little more for you….Cason Wallace can ball. Still young and working on his body, IQ etc. He’ll keep adding to his game and sort it out and is definitely a keeper.
People have figured out OKC’s flopping. They won’t get those calls this year and SGA will have 5-10pm a less per game as a result and they won’t be the #1 seed. And they are a horrible road team for a lot of these reasons.
Last season, the Thunder ranked 26th in the league in free-throw attempts per game, averaging 20.2 at home and 20.6 on the road. Despite limited trips to the line, they recorded a league-best point differential of +12.9 per game. Even under a hypothetical scenario in which officiating bias reduced their margin by 7.5 points per game-the midpoint of your 5–10 point range, they would still maintain a positive differential of +5.4. Thus underscoring the sustainability of their performance beyond free-throw variance.
OKC is so stacked and good on their front office for making the right moves to get them into this position.
You have SGA Dort JDub Chet Hartenstein
After that Wallace Topic Mitchell AC Joe Wiggins Williams Deing JWill and Sorber
As guys become expensive and need upgrades on their contracts you can just replace them from within cause you have so much young talent and so many future draft picks to just keep going.
They also do a really good job not letting these young role players get to big of an opportunity that when FA comes around they try asking for ridiculous money.
They have 1 superstar in SGA and after that like 4/5 maybe even 6 really nice starters. They haven’t tried to rush things and make a trade for a big name they just rolled with what they have.
Even their coach coming up from the G League not going after old has been big names.
Can not hate on them (besides the flopping) they deserve their title and as a Sixers fan I’d happily see them win another couple cause we ain’t doing anything anytime soon