National Basketball Association

OKC Thunder: Predictions

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

With the NBA season starting today and the OKC Thunder season starting tomorrow, it is time to make some predictions.

The NBA season doesn’t officially start until everyone gets their predictions in. Predictions are fun and they also start conversations. With everyone making predictions though, you get a lot of people talking about the same things.

I could tell you that I think the OKC Thunder will win 43 games, but that’s no fun given that’s pretty close to every statistical model out there. So I tried to make my predictions a little more niche and tried to be a little bolder on a few, because what fun would it be to predict a bunch of things that are likely. This way, you can tell me how wrong I am now and tell me how wrong I was at the end of the season.

The Thunder will have a bottom 15 defense.

This prediction I feel pretty comfortable about. The Thunder finished 13th in defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) last year.

After trading Serge Ibaka and losing [REDACTED] to free agency, the Thunder lost two good defenders who played big minutes. Ibaka was much maligned for his performance last season, but defended quite well. His starting spot at the power forward position is likely to be taken by rookie Domantas Sabonis.

Sabonis has looked ok on defense in the few games I have seen him in, but still looks like a rookie. He gets lost here and there, fouls too much and can be a step slow trying to catch up to how fast the NBA games moves.

Then there is the bench. With the Thunder cutting Ronnie Price, who is the best defender that comes off the bench? Nick Collison? He will be 36 opening night and isn’t likely to play much. The next best defender might be Josh Huestis and who knows if he is even going to play. It could get ugly quick when the bench heavy lineups are in.

Kyle Singler will shoot over 38% from 3

Is it bold to say that a career 37% 3 point shooter with do slightly better this season? If you’ve only watched Singler since he has been with the Thunder it is about as bold as it gets.

Singler shot 30.9% from 3 last season and it felt more like 18%. He is taking a new approach this season and it seems to be working. He shot lights out during the preseason and may benefit from a more democratic offense. Maybe he works himself back to the player that shot 38.2% from 3 on 246 attempts in the 2013-14 season.

Domantas Sabonis will finish top 3 in ROY

Few rookies will have a significant role on playoff team. Sabonis could benefit from this in the voting. He won’t score a bunch of points, but he will be a big part of the offense and might be the only good 3 point shooter in the starting lineup.

His defense will likely be bad, but so will most of the other rookies.

Enes Kanter will win 6th man of the year

This one I don’t feel particularly good about, but Enes was such a pleasure to follow on Twitter this summer I felt I should give hime some love.

It is possible he plays more minutes this year and he just scores in bunches. His defense will still be bad, but that has never been much of an issue with this award. Historically this award goes to the bench player that averages the most points, I like his chances of being just that.

The OKC Thunder finish 1st in OREB% by a wider margin than last year

The Thunder led the league in rebounding their own misses last year, collecting 31.1% of them. For context the Detroit Pistons finished 2nd with 27.0%. The 4.1% gap between the two teams was larger than the gap between Detroit and the 23rd ranked Spurs who notoriously punt on offensive rebound in lieu of getting back on defense.

Given the historic nature of the Thunder’s rebounding last year this one may be unlikely, but the Thunder are all in on chasing offensive rebounds and have the personnel to do so.