The Oklahoma City Thunder don’t have a whole lot of wins to show for it, but they have done an excellent job creating comebacks to make even most losses competitive.
If there’s been a way to define the Thunder’s season, it’s that competition. They tend to stick around to a frustrating degree for opponents.
On Friday, the Milwaukee Bucks led by as many as 22 points before the Thunder whittled the deficit down to seven midway through the fourth quarter.
On Tuesday, the Thunder trailed the Portland Trail Blazers by 24 points but put on a 29-point swing to come back and take the five-point lead. They were one Damian Lillard surge away from victory and completing the second-largest turnaround in team history.
Two days before that, the Bucks got off to a 13-3 lead. The Thunder then scored 14 points in a row and held on the rest of the way.
We can go on. Overcoming the 17-point Phoenix Suns lead on Jan. 27 to get the victory. The 15-point Los Angeles Clippers lead with 4:15 to play in the Jan. 24 matchup that the Thunder cut as low as six before eventually conceding. The 22-point comeback against the Chicago Bulls, a Jan. 15 game which the Thunder won in overtime.
Point is, Oklahoma City has put together a lot of comebacks. A lot of quick runs. Win or lose, it’s become an expectation that they won’t get blown out, even if they fall behind by a dozen or 18 or even 20 points.
Center Al Horford, whose NBA career is longer than any other active Thunder player, says that putting together a comeback isn’t as steep a climb as was when he first started playing.
“It’s a big difference,” he said on Tuesday following the loss to the Blazers. “Now with teams shooting so many 3s and the game being played much faster, you can’t count any team out.”
In Horford’s rookie season, 2007-08, there was one team whose pace of play was over 100. 23 teams played with a pace measured below 96.
This season, every single team plays faster than those 23 teams. The New York Knicks, with the slowest pace in the league, are measured at 96.32. Sixteen teams in the league, including the Thunder, have a pace above 100.
Horford himself is an example of the 3-point revolution. Over his first eight seasons in the league, he attempted a total of 65 3-point shots. Through 20 games this year, he has attempted 114.
“Earlier in my career, once you got down over 20, it was very difficult for teams to come back. Rarely would you see a comeback,” Horford said. “I feel like the way that we’re playing now, shooting more 3s, playing with more possessions, I feel like now it’s not as safe to have that type of lead.”
With that said, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault made sure to note that making a comeback is not a straightforward task, despite his team making pushes so frequently.
“I don’t think erasing 20 points is ever easy, that’s for sure,” he said.
As a first-year NBA head coach following one year as an assistant, Daigneault hasn’t seen as much at this level as Horford. Daigneault said he doesn’t know how comebacks have changed, but over his time as a head coach in the NBA and G League, he’s worked to instill a mindset to continue pushing.
“All I know is that there’s 48 minutes on the clock and from the jump to the buzzer you’ve got an opportunity to compete,” he said. “The thing that I’ve learned in a short period of time is that if you line up and you compete for those 48 minutes and you just keep playing and you just keep coming, anything can happen in the games.”
This post originally appeared on OKCThunderWire. Follow us on Facebook!