Are we witnessing the greatest team in NBA history?
The Oklahoma City Thunder aren’t merely matching all-time great teams like Michael Jordan’s Bulls and Stephen Curry’s Warriors. They’re on pace to blow right past them.
Nobody in the world knows better than Steve Kerr what it takes to become the greatest basketball team of all time.
In 1996, he played alongside Michael Jordan for the Chicago Bulls as they won 72 games. In 2016, he coached Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors when they set a new record by winning 73.
So it’s best to pay attention when Kerr says a team is about to do something that nobody has ever done before. Which is exactly what he suggests this year’s Oklahoma City Thunder are about to do.
“I think they’ll break the record," Kerr said, before the Thunder’s 49-point blowout of the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday improved their record to 24-1, tying the Warriors’ start to the 2015-16 season. “What they’ve built is incredible."
There’s good reason to believe that the Thunder will become the first NBA team ever to win 74 of their 82 regular-season games. That’s because, by the numbers, Oklahoma City isn’t just as good as the ‘96 Bulls and ‘16 Warriors.
The Thunder are actually better.
The catch-all metric known as “net rating" is designed to measure dominance. It tracks how much a team outscores its opponents over the course of 100 possessions. The best teams in NBA history, it’s no surprise, are net rating monsters, combining cutthroat scoring attacks with defenses as solid as Fort Knox.
The ‘96 Bulls combined the NBA’s No. 1 defense and No. 1 offense, and achieved a net rating of +13.4, which for three decades stood as a record. The ‘16 Warriors had the third-best defense and the best offense, and put up a +10.7 net rating.
This year’s Thunder haven’t just nudged past the mark established by Jordan and the Bulls. They’ve blown it out of the water.
With reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander pacing the offensive attack and an airtight defense walling off the rim on the other end, the Thunder have put up a mind-blowing +16.0 net rating, entering Wednesday’s game.
“I thought we played the right way," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said after watching his team demolish the Dallas Mavericks last week. “We’ve played the right way for most of the season."
What “playing the right way" looks like is, in essence, dominating every single facet of a game of professional basketball. Take Gilgeous-Alexander, who is averaging 32.8 points per game on 55.6% shooting. He’s not just the most lethal one-on-one scorer in the NBA—he’s put up higher marks in both categories than Jordan in ‘96 and Curry in ‘16.
Or consider the Thunder’s defense. With a slew of guards that specialize in steals and 7-foot-1 center Chet Holmgren swatting away shots, the Thunder are allowing just 105.4 points per 100 possessions—which ranks 6.5 points better than the No. 2 defense. The gap between the Thunder and the next-best team is as big as the gap between the No. 2 team and the No. 24 team.
“They have great defense, great depth, great coaching," Kerr said. “They’ve got Shai. They have everything we had in ‘16."
Kerr also sees similarities between how his Warriors used their 2015 championship run as a springboard to all-around dominance and what the Thunder are doing after lifting last year’s title.
“They’re just rolling through everybody," Kerr said. “They have that deep confidence that comes with winning a championship."
The most shocking part about Oklahoma City’s outrageous start is that they’ve rolled through the league with one hand tied behind their back. In the years when Golden State and Chicago set their records, they had a full complement of star power at their disposal. Curry and Klay Thompson played 76 of 82 games together, and Jordan and Scottie Pippen both appeared in all 82.
The Thunder’s only All-Star besides Gilgeous-Alexander is forward Jalen Williams, who played through an injured wrist en route to an Oklahoma City championship last season. Williams missed the first 19 games this season—and all the Thunder did without him was win 18 of them while blowing teams out by an average of 16.5 points. Since he’s returned, they’ve been flawless.
Perhaps the only thing that can hold the Thunder back is a strange scheduling fluke that neither the Bulls nor the Warriors had to deal with. Oklahoma City’s win over Phoenix on Wednesday qualified them for the semifinals of the NBA Cup, the league’s in-season tournament. If the Thunder advance to the championship, they will play a game that technically doesn’t count in the regular-season standings.
That means there’s a way they could win more games than any NBA team ever has—and still not set the record.
Write to Robert O’Connell at robert.oconnell@wsj.com
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