By every statistical marker, the Oklahoma City Thunder have played like a championship contender during the 2023-24 season. Oklahoma City's 30-13 record is tied for second-best in the NBA, while the Thunder's plus-7.9 point differential ranks third, behind the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. No other team has outscored opponents by more than six points per game.
Yet while the Celtics (+300) and Sixers (+1200) are two of the top five teams in title odds at ESPN BET, Oklahoma City (+1800) lags in eighth behind a team that would be in the play-in tournament if the season ended today (the Los Angeles Lakers, +1500) and another that would not have home-court advantage (the Phoenix Suns, +1400).
Both the Suns and Lakers won a playoff series last season, and they have rosters loaded with proven postseason success. Meanwhile, the Thunder's play-in loss was their first postseason appearance since 2020, and three of their starters have never seen the playoffs.
Is the betting market right to favor the experience of the Suns and the Lakers over the Thunder's youth? Let's take a look at what history tells us about precocious teams like Oklahoma City -- and how this rising contender should approach the NBA's Feb. 8 trade deadline.
Why the Thunder are exceeding expectations
Hopes were high for Oklahoma City after it added Chet Holmgren -- the No. 2 pick of the 2022 draft who missed his first NBA season due to injury -- to the young core that finished 40-42 last season. Yet few observers expected the Thunder to be this good, this soon.
Oklahoma City entered this campaign with an over/under win total of 44.5 games, tied for eighth best in the Western Conference. The Thunder are on pace to shatter that total. They'd win 57 games based on their current win percentage and are through what appears to be the more difficult half of their schedule.
Some regression in Oklahoma City's shooting could be expected. The Thunder rank second in the NBA from 3-point range at 39%, which is unexpected for a team that finished 17th at 36% last season. Among Oklahoma City's top five players in made 3s, only star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is shooting worse than 38%, and Jalen Williams (46%) and Luguentz Dort (42.5%) have taken leaps from last season, when they shot 36% and 33%, respectively. Meanwhile, rookies Holmgren (38%) and Cason Wallace (42%) have outshot what might be expected based on their college performances.
Nonetheless, the Thunder don't seem likely to fade out of the battle for home-court advantage in the West playoffs. ESPN's Basketball Power Index (BPI) projects Oklahoma City for 56 wins on average, slightly behind the LA Clippers for second in the West and behind only the Celtics in the Eastern Conference.
If Oklahoma City gets there, the Thunder would be just the ninth team since the 1999-2000 season to win at least 55 games (or the equivalent winning percentage in shortened seasons) with an over-under total lower than 45 wins entering the season.
The track record doesn't suggest that the clock strikes midnight on such Cinderellas early in the playoffs. All of Oklahoma City's eight would-be predecessors won at least one playoff series, half reached the conference finals and two (the 2007-08 Lakers and the 2020-21 Suns) made it to the NBA Finals before losing.
The latter stat suggests there might be an ultimate ceiling on what the Thunder can accomplish this season. The lowest over-under total on record for a champion (since 1999-2000) was the Golden State Warriors at 48.5 wins entering 2021-22. Still, teams like Oklahoma City have gotten within a couple of wins of a championship.
How the young roster stacks up historically
There are some intriguing parallels between the Thunder and the 2020-21 Suns, who also were coming off a season that finished in the lottery but suggested their potential (an 8-0 run, in Phoenix's case, through the resumption of the 2019-20 season in the NBA bubble). The key difference is that the Suns accelerated their rebuild by acquiring 35-year-old Chris Paul from Oklahoma City to complement their young talent. (By contrast, the Thunder's big veteran addition this past offseason was journeyman Davis Bertans, who has played just 83 minutes all season.)
Oklahoma City's surge has been fueled by internal growth and the addition of rookies Holmgren and Wallace. As a result, the Thunder boast one of the NBA's youngest rosters. Weighted by minutes played, their average age (23.88 as of the end of the regular season) is slightly younger than the second-place San Antonio Spurs (23.92), whose record is 8-35.
From that standpoint, Oklahoma City is a greater historical outlier. Just two teams in NBA history have ever won more than 45 games with a minutes-weighted age lower than 24.5 -- both of them also the Thunder, in 2009-10 (when they went 50-32) and 2010-11 (55-27).
Expanding the sample to teams with a weighted age of 26 or younger still produces just six teams in NBA history that won at least 55 games: Oklahoma City in 2010-11 and 2011-12, the 2021-22 Memphis Grizzlies (weighted age of 24.7), the 2017-18 Celtics (25.5), the 1969-70 Milwaukee Bucks (25.6) and the 1977-78 Portland Trail Blazers (25.9).
All six teams in that small group advanced in the playoffs, and four reached the conference finals. The 1977-78 Blazers, who saw MVP Bill Walton injured during their first series after a bye, and 2017-18 Celtics were the only ones who weren't eliminated by the eventual champions.
Why the Thunder can go deep in playoffs
NBA fans of a certain age were conditioned to believe that playoff success was a process by the orderly way the "Bad Boys" Detroit Pistons needed to overcome the Celtics and Lakers to become champions before themselves being topped by the Chicago Bulls in their fourth consecutive playoff matchup -- setting up the Bulls' dynasty. The reality is that most of NBA history is messier than that, and there's no particular waiting period required before making a long playoff run.
Before this season, Oklahoma City executive vice president and general manager Sam Presti -- who also built the previous Thunder young core by selecting Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden in successive drafts -- tried to downplay expectations for the team.
"I'm not trying to dismiss everyone's excitement, but we're not a .500 team [yet]," Presti said, before alluding to the late New York streetball legend John Strickland's famous quote popularized by Jay Z. "We have to finish our breakfast before we start acting like we're on the cusp of something."
The situation has changed now that the Thunder are eating elite teams for dessert. Against other teams with a .600 winning percentage or better, Oklahoma City has gone an NBA-best 9-4 (.692), including beating the defending champion Nuggets twice in Denver -- something no team did in the 2022-23 regular season -- along with an impressive victory in their only matchup with the Celtics.
It might still be a bit early for the Thunder to make a major move at the deadline. They'll surely want to see their roster together in the playoffs before considering moving one of their core contributors. Yet Oklahoma City can still improve its odds of a deep playoff run with a minor move to shore up the back end of the rotation.
In addition to a couple of small trade exceptions, the Thunder have Aleksej Pokusevski making $5 million in the final season of his rookie contract. Expanded salary matching in the new collective bargaining agreement would allow Oklahoma City to take back up to $10 million in salary for Pokusevski, who has played just 43 minutes this season.
Adding an eighth reliable rotation player in the frontcourt to the Thunder's rock-solid top seven of their starters and backup guards Wallace and Isaiah Joe would set them up nicely to take on anyone in the postseason. Oklahoma City has played like a championship contender so far, and there's no reason to expect that to change when the calendar turns to April.