It’s sometimes felt like the Oklahoma City franchise has turned into a post-training hub for the NBA over the past two seasons, with plenty of prospects on the court looking to develop top players like Aleksej Pokusevsky or Josh Giddeyuntil the Australian suffered a hip injury last season.
The coming year was to be more exciting, with in particular the 100% return of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (and that of Giddey), but the withdrawal announced for the season of the unfortunate Chet Holgrem (2e choice of the last draft) clearly broke the mood.
Despite this blow, Josh Giddey ensures that the atmosphere has been there since the players began to meet before the start of the “training camp”. within ten days.
“It’s getting closer, the guys are excited”, did he slip. “The offseason was good, I worked on the things I needed to work on. I’m back at OKC now, the team is together, all the guys are excited and ready to go again”.
The 30 victories in the sights
Inevitably, discussions and projections are going well, and all dreams are generally allowed at this time of the year in the 30 franchises that make up the league. Asked what will be the objective of the Thunder this season, Josh Giddey nevertheless wanted to be pragmatic. The goal of his team will already be to try to do better than the previous year, which ended with 24 victories.
“The common objective around the group is to do better than last year”he added. “I will say the same thing next year, we want to continue to improve gradually. It’s difficult to go from a team in reconstruction to a team carved out for the title in one year. I think being competitive every night is something that is close to our hearts. Last year there were nights when it was obvious that the opposing teams were more experienced, older and more talented than us. But I think this year, if we come in with the mentality that we can compete with anybody, that will put us in a good position to go forward.”
Even if it didn’t start well on this point, the management of the health of the major players will be essential to reach 25-30 victories. Because in terms of state of mind, the Thunder seems ready to return to battle.
“I’m excited for this team, they’re a hungry group. The guys have been working this summer so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do together this year. “
| Josh Giddey | Percentage | Bounces | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | Crew | GM | Minimum | Shots | 3 points | LF | Off | Def | Early | pd | party | Int | bp | CT | Points |
| 2021-22 | OKAY | 54 | 32 | 41.9 | 26.3 | 70.9 | 1.8 | 6.0 | 7.8 | 6.4 | 1.6 | 0.9 | 3.2 | 0.4 | 12.5 |
| Total | 54 | 32 | 41.9 | 26.3 | 70.9 | 1.8 | 6.0 | 7.8 | 6.4 | 1.6 | 0.9 | 3.2 | 0.4 | 12.5 | |
