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Duality
Since the NSL inception, the Thunder have lead a duality - some talented vets that seem like they could bring regular season success and a bit of a tilt towards team building that promises bigger things in the future - both possibly marred by coaching that meanders between indifference and incompetence.
Like their first two seasons, a quarter of the way into the season OKC sits within a slim margin of what is now called the "play-in" spots. Everyone in and around the league is interested in what is wrong with the team and how much they're underperforming. And the team is straddling the fact that they like the roster they've built and the undeniable situation that they're not winning games.
Heading into the season it looked like the team had found a great combination and diversity of talent that would have them survive any trend in the league - equipped with a young-athletic franchise cornerstone, a couple of veteran scoring guards, several wings with different skillsets and a handful of bigs with different offerings - not the least of which was a well-paired starting frontcourt combining athleticism, rebounding, rim protection and scoring. The prevailing sentiment league-wide is that these highly skilled players potentially even worse than their lesser counterparts on other teams because they think they don't suck - but are not talented enough to transcend that difference and create wins.
So five weeks in the OKC front office is being forced to make judgements on the team construction and their future faster than they would like. The team is definitely not beating good teams, but they're also one of two Western Conference teams that have not lost a game to a sub-.500 team and have played the least of such games in the league (5). Many of the teams in the league are circling veteran talents like Kemba and Seth and even younger-but-not-young guys like Wood, Randle, Milton and Theis - hoping that the team's orientation towards building around 20 year olds Edwards, Okoro, and Okongwu will allow some nice talent onto the trade market.
Based on current records, 5 of OKC's 6 easiest weeks are in the last 6 weeks of the season - meaning that even if they're a solid margin out of the playoff race, they could easily makeup the distance based on the talent on their roster. Add to that the current underperformance and you have a recipe for a nice comeback story.
On the other side of the fence you have a team holding their own pick with no reasonable championship aspirations also holding significant veteran talent that could really jumpstart a rebuild with real potential in the next few years.
Like with every other OKC story in recent history, this ends with "we'll see"... hopefully there will be more direction soon.
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