Upcoming schedule should reveal much about the Thunder
MIAMI — There’s been no questioning Russell Westbrook’s excellence.
The Thunder point guard is an MVP candidate, a veritable force of nature. He’s among the NBA’s elite, and the point is not open for debate.
And then there’s his team.
The Thunder is 20-12 as it gets set to meet the Grizzlies in Memphis on Thursday. At this early stage, it stands fifth in the Western Conference, squarely in the playoff picture and just a game and a half out of the No. 4 seed.
And yet, there’s some debate as to just how good Oklahoma City is.
“To me, they’re the seventh-best team in the west,” said Tim Bontemps, who covers the NBA for The Washington Post. “But the gap between seven and eight is massive. So they’re the worst of the good teams, but that makes them substantially better than the bad teams. And really, that’s just because the point guard is a superhuman.”
The lingering doubt about Oklahoma City’s stature centers on its schedule.
With 50 games left to play, the Thunder has played five games against the top four teams in the Western Conference, going 2-3 against the Warriors, Clippers and Rockets. Oklahoma City has yet to play the Spurs, the West’s No. 2 team, and on Thursday will get its first look at the seventh-place Grizzlies.
Beginning with the Grizzlies, the Thunder will play five straight games and 11 of its next 13 against teams who entered Wednesday in the top eight in their respective conferences.
It’s the toughest stretch of the season for the Thunder, which is in a stretch in which 14 of 18 games are on the road, and there’s some sense it might provide clarity as to just what Oklahoma City is.
Even Westbrook, who long has said he prepares for every game the same way, said on Wednesday that there’s “kinda
sorta” more to be learned against the NBA’s elite, though he typically tries not to concern himself with the opponent.
“If you want to be a great team, you got to play every night, and that’s what we’re trying to get to,” Westbrook said.
“Regardless if the team is better than us, if they’re not – regardless of any record, you got to go in and compete and play your brand of basketball. If we lose games like that, we can be OK with ourselves at the end.”
So far, Westbrook said he feels “great” about where the Thunder stands.
But now the road gets bumpy.
The Thunder ranks 27th in the NBA in strength of schedule so far, according to ESPN’s rankings.
In Basketball Reference’s strength of schedule rating, which compares the difficulty of one team’s schedule to the league average schedule – Oklahoma City is 24th.
The Thunder has played 10 games against teams with winning records and 22 against teams that are sub-.500.
Still, there are some encouraging signs.
“I like what they’ve shown me without (Victor) Oladipo,” said Sekou Smith, who covers the league for NBA.com, noting that he expected the Thunder’s success to be closely tied to Oladipo’s fit with Westbrook. Oladipo has missed the past eight games with a sprained right wrist.
“When you look at a schedule, you can steal games throughout the course of a season that you shouldn’t win and you’re gonna drop games that you shouldn’t,” Smith said.
“And I think how you perform without a key player is far more important than how you navigate the schedule in December and January.”
And, Bontemps said, the NBA is “surprisingly mediocre” after a small top tier of teams.
Part of the reason Oklahoma City has played so many sub-.500 teams is that there are so many – 18 of the 30 teams in the league.
Still, the Thunder’s place in the pecking order could become clear, Smith notes, as elite teams deploy defenses designed either to slow Westbrook or concede his brilliance and stop the players around him.
Memphis is the first stop on a schedule that steps up, but hardly the last.
Between now and Jan. 31, the Thunder will play all four teams ahead of it in the Western Conference standings – the Warriors, Spurs, Clippers and Rockets – at least once, and see each of them on the road.
“I’ll be surprised if they win more than one of those games,” Bontemps said.
“If they go 2-2 or better, then maybe I start to adjust my thinking up a little bit, and maybe they are better than I think.”