Oklahoma City has made it hard for teams to earn their points. 

The Oklahoma City Thunder have been on a roll to start the season, as the team is 8-2 after its first 10 games. This is truly impressive considering that the team has had horrible injury problems this early in the season, and it is hopefully something that the Thunder can continue as the season goes on. 

There have been multiple factors that have gone into the Thunder beating the odds thus far, and one of the biggest ones is their dominance down low. The Thunder have been without Chet Holmgren for the past couple of games, but Isaiah Hartenstein and Aday Mara have held down the paint, with Mara averaging 1.9 blocks per game. 

This has caused OKC’s opponents to not think so fondly of scoring down low when playing the Thunder, and has forced them to shoot from deep. This season, Oklahoma City’s opponents, on average, only make 13.5 shots per game within five feet of the hoop. This is the second-best in the league, only 0.3 behind the league best. 

Additionally, the Thunder have the second most amount of shots taken on them from 20-24 feet, with teams attempting 21.6 shots per game from that range. Luckily, teams don’t have much success from this range either, with opponents only hitting 32.9% of the shots from this range. 

Forcing opponents to shoot from deep rather than force their way inside has worked wonders for the Thunder, and with Holmgren expected to make a return later this season, it seems as if this situation will only get better.

Of course, Oklahoma City did see the negative effect of this, in the circumstance that the Thunder’s opponent just can’t miss from deep. In OKC’s second loss of the year, the Houston Rockets shot an insane 44% from downtown, leaving OKC with no way of combating their efforts. This will have to be something the Thunder are able to stop as the season goes along, or else teams who get hot won’t be stopped. 

OKC having such a dominant frontcourt is something that will take the team a long way this season. With Holmgren, Hartenstein and Mara all progressing and continuing to play better with one another, the Thunder could be identified as the best frontcourt in the league by far. This dominant frontcourt could support the backcourt issues for OKC and could help them get all the way back to the NBA Finals.