LOS ANGELES — Last season, while Oklahoma City Thunder finished as the No. 1 seed in the West, they struggled when they ran into physical teams. For example, they were 1-3 against the Lakers with LeBron James, Anthony Davis, size and physicality across the board. That lack of physicality was part of the Thunder’s undoing in the playoffs.
Good luck pushing the Thunder around this season.
Watch the Thunder — especially in person — and it’s instantly evident how much more physical they are. This is a much more mature team that understands what happened a year ago and its core players came back physically and mentally stronger.
The Thunder also went out and got Isaiah Hartenstein to put in the paint.
“It’s more than [Hartenstein]. It’s collective,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of the team’s improved physicality.
It starts with Hartenstein
Although, it starts with Hartenstein, something Jalen Williams acknowledged when asked about the team’s increased comfort with physical play.
“Isaiah Hart. I didn’t have to jump ball tonight, so that was nice,” Jalen Williams joked about the big man. “I think just having, like, you know, some bigs back has helped us…
“We’re growing through the experiences together. So a lot of times, when they’ve been physical with us, it’s one of those things that we try and remember and keep that feeling, so when we do play them again, we kind of know what to expect. It’s kind of like a maturity thing. Not letting the other team hit you first, and also being willing to kind of fight back and be physical too.”
“We knew as a group—and the world kinda knew—there was a hole in us as a team last year,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said before the season. “I think Isaiah fills that hole very well. Sam [Presti, team president] did a good job filling it. We are better because of it.”
Oklahoma City also has Chet Holmgren in the paint, and while he is blocking 2.6 shots a game this season. He was there in the paint intimidating players driving the lane a season ago, but nobody is going to mistake him for a physical presence in the style of Hartenstein.
“You can’t not acknowledge Isaiah Hartstein,” Daigneault said. “Like [Friday night against the Lakers] he’s able to play Davis head up, we can provide a little bit of help. Whereas in the past, that would be a matchup where we would be very reactive, and we would send bodies to him, and that puts you in rotation, and it gets you out of sorts on a glass. So he was a huge factor.”
Thunder step up physical defense
The other thing that jumps out watching Oklahoma City is they don’t roll out a single weak defender in their rotation (which is currently without maybe their best perimeter defender, Alex Caruso, due to a hip injury). There is no easy switch onto a defender to target.
That depth of defenders combined with increased physicality is why Oklahoma City has the best defense in the league — and it has yet to play Hartenstein and Holmgren together (they haven’t been healthy at the same time). However, having just one of them back to clean things up at the rim lets those quality perimeter defenders be more aggressive.
“They’ve got great hands, very aggressive at the point of attack,” LeBron said of the Thunder. “They’ve got some guys that can guard the ball. They do a good job of getting their hands on loose rocks out there and 50/50 balls. [They’re a] good team, a really good team.”
“We took on the individual challenges tonight,” Daigneault said. “They play a really slow tempo. They play a lot of isolation. They just kind of overwhelm you with their personnel, with the force of their personnel. And we had our chest on them. We were good in our help. We were good in our rotations.”
Oklahoma City has had its chest on a lot of teams this season, and it’s the reason they look like a legitimate title contender.
Nobody is going to push them around and out of the playoffs this season.
