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But a funny thing happened on the way to history: The Thunder lost a third<\/a>. And a fourth<\/a>. And a fifth<\/a>. And a SIXTH<\/a> \u2014 to the Charlotte Hornets, of all teams, in what was, by some reckonings, one of the most surprising blowout results in decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder are 7-6 since starting 24-1. (Davis Long\/Yahoo Sports Illustration)<\/p>\n Suddenly, a team that was on pace to sprint past 73 wins has been playing .500 ball for the better part of a month. And it came vanishingly close to falling south of that border on Wednesday, too \u2014 needing a fourth-quarter comeback and some Shai Gilgeous-Alexander heroics<\/a> just to hold off the Utah Jazz, owners of a 12-24 record and the NBA\u2019s worst defense<\/a>, at home.<\/p>\n Wins are wins, and you don\u2019t have to apologize for taking them where they come. They aren\u2019t all created equally, though \u2014 and narrowly avoiding another slip-up didn\u2019t do much to quell the concerns of those who\u2019ve spent the last few weeks wondering how what had previously looked like such a historic team can suddenly look so humble.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Thunder swingman Jalen Williams offered a pretty balanced take on that following the narrow escape:<\/p>\n \u201cI think everything\u2019s about perspective,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThis is going to sound cocky, but the last three years, we win so much that when we have a normal, human stretch of losing a game or two that we shouldn\u2019t have lost, the world freaks out. […] Like, we\u2019re not superheroes. We have human moments. We get physically and mentally tired throughout the season. And I feel like that kind of showed, just in that stretch, and that\u2019s something that we just get to work on, get better with.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dramatic shift in tone from the \u201cAre they going to win 75 games???\u201d talk that some of us engaged in, but the man\u2019s got some points. (And, to be fair: It\u2019s not like he was the one putting the 2025-26 Thunder next to the 2015-16 Warriors.)<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Since the start of the 2023-24 season<\/a>, nobody has more wins (156) or a higher winning percentage (.772) than Oklahoma City. When a team wins more than three-fourths of the time, there aren\u2019t exactly a whole lot of opportunities to get used to it losing consecutive games \u2014 which the Thunder have done twice in the last three weeks<\/a> after doing it twice all of last season<\/a> \u2014 let alone experiencing an extended stretch of malaise. When you\u2019re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression; when you\u2019re accustomed to a 60- or 70-win pace, .500 ball feels like a crisis.<\/p>\n NBA Cup hangover?<\/p>\n The \u201cphysically and mentally tired\u201d thing might have some legs. On this week\u2019s episode of The Big Number<\/a>, Tom Haberstroh and I looked into whether teams, like the Thunder, that make the semifinals of the NBA Cup experience a \u201changover\u201d in the weeks following their trips to Las Vegas \u2026<\/p>\n \u2026 and while the sample size is still small, the number of games those Vegas teams have played lately isn\u2019t. Wednesday\u2019s win over the Jazz marked Oklahoma City\u2019s 12th game in 21 days since the end of the tournament \u2014 a stretch that has included four back-to-backs. Nine NBA teams have played a dozen games in that three-week span<\/a>, including all four semifinalists (the Knicks, Spurs, Thunder and Magic), with a combined record of 53-55 \u2014 a .491 winning percentage). By contrast, the 10 teams that have played either nine or 10 games in that same timeframe have gone 55-44 \u2014 a .556 winning percentage.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Your mileage may vary on just how much you think a couple of extra games\u2019 worth of miles over a couple of weeks add up. It might show up, though, in the legs on your jumper, where a Thunder team that was splashing 38.1% of its 3-point shots through its 24-1 start, fifth-best in the NBA<\/a>, has dropped down to 31.8% since its NBA Cup semifinal loss, fifth-worst in the league<\/a> in that span.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a contagious cold snap for a Thunder offense that ranked fourth in offensive efficiency through 25 games<\/a> and has dropped to 18th since<\/a>, with rotation mainstays Cason Wallace, Luguentz Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe all shooting below 40% from the field over the past three weeks<\/a>, and SGA, Wallace, Wiggins and Alex Caruso all under 30% from 3-point land.<\/p>\n Injury issues<\/p>\n The absence of starting center Isaiah Hartenstein, who\u2019s missed the last six games with a right calf strain<\/a>, hurts, too. With him on the floor, the Thunder grab offensive rebounds<\/a> at a top-10 rate. With him on the sideline, they perform like the worst offensive rebounding team in the league \u2014 a particular bummer when there are more misses to corral than there used to be. (OKC dropping from a top-five defensive rebounding team<\/a> through its 24-1 start to 16th in clearing the defensive boards<\/a> during this lull hasn\u2019t helped, either.)<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Some of those misses have been coming off the right hand of Williams, who began his ascent as Gilgeous-Alexander\u2019s running buddy two seasons ago<\/a> and cemented himself as a cornerstone in his own right last season, earning All-Star, All-NBA and All-Defensive honors and authoring an iconic 40-point performance in the NBA Finals<\/a> to help propel the Thunder to the championship. After missing the first 19 games of the season rehabilitating following offseason surgery on his right wrist<\/a>, though, Williams has struggled to recover his shooting touch.<\/p>\n Williams\u2019 accuracy is down everywhere but the free-throw line this season \u2014 most notably from midrange and beyond the arc<\/a> \u2014 contributing to a true shooting percentage of .536, which would be the worst mark of his four-year NBA career. It\u2019s also one of the worst among high-volume offensive players in the league thus far this season: Of the 53 players this season who\u2019ve played at least 500 minutes and have a usage rate of 25% or higher, Williams\u2019 TS% ranks 48th<\/a> \u2014 ahead of only Brandon Miller, Jordan Poole, Russell Westbrook, Jeremiah Fears and Ja Morant.<\/p>\n It seems reasonable to give Williams a little bit of grace amid his shooting slump, considering it hasn\u2019t even been six weeks since Williams came back from surgery to repair an injury that literally forced him to re-learn how to shoot the basketball, and that he\u2019s trying to get back to full speed without the benefit of training camp or preseason. A player using that many possessions that inefficiently does have an impact on your offense, though: The Thunder are scoring like a league-average unit in J-Dub\u2019s minutes<\/a>, and at a league-worst rate in the minutes he\u2019s played without Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s a competitive privilege\u2019<\/p>\n Another place that the additional post-Cup workload could show up? Execution in close-and-late situations.<\/p>\n Heading into the semifinal against San Antonio, the Thunder were 9-1 in \u201cclutch\u201d games<\/a> \u2014 defined by the NBA as contests in which the score was within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime \u2014 with a league-best 136.7 offensive rating<\/a> and just three turnovers in 90 crunch-time minutes<\/a>. Since? They\u2019re 2-3 in the clutch<\/a> with a 119 offensive rating<\/a>, shooting just 20-for-55 (36.4%) from the field and 5-for-25 (20%) from 3-point range<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of those losses \u2014 a 108-105 defeat at the hands of the better-than-anyone-outside-Phoenix-imagined-they-could-be Suns<\/a> \u2014 came on an absolute honey of a game-winner<\/a> by Devin Booker; sometimes, great offense beats even the best defense on the planet. That\u2019s the thing, though. For two months, the only pathways to beating the Thunder seemed to be \u201cget them to run out of gas on the second night of a back-to-back on the road<\/a>\u201d or \u201chave a gigantic anomaly and three star guards, and play perfectly<\/a>.\u201d Now, it\u2019s become clear that there\u2019s more than one way to get them. Now, you know they bleed.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n [<\/strong>Get more Thunder news: Oklahoma City team feed<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a competitive privilege to be a team that other teams are up to play for,\u201d Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said Monday, according to Joe Mussatto of The Oklahoman<\/a>. \u201cAnd it forces you to rise to that. And if you can, you really can get better and stronger as a result of that. And if you don\u2019t, you learn the lesson. We got to learn the lessons in these ones.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the lessons Williams has taken from this uncommon glitch in Oklahoma City\u2019s unnervingly efficient opponent-mashing machine? Life in the NBA isn\u2019t always so smooth.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery team this year has lost a couple of games that they wish they could have back,\u201d he said Wednesday. \u201cWe understand that it\u2019s just like: How many of those can you limit during the season? And how much better can you get because of it?\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The prospect of the Thunder getting better \u2014 by getting Hartenstein (and backup big Jaylin Williams, who has missed the last 12 games with right heel bursitis<\/a>) back in the fold, by thawing out those frosty jumpers, by doing a better job of finishing possessions \u2014 ought to be a scary one, considering they\u2019re still, even in this somewhat diminished form, good enough to beat anyone on any night. (Well, maybe not anyone<\/a>.)<\/p>\n What three weeks of hiccups have made clear, though, is that they\u2019re not dominant enough to beat everyone on every night, irrespective of who\u2019s in or out of the lineup. Especially when the price of wearing the crown is taking every team\u2019s best shot, without a breather in sight or any quarter given.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n![\"(Davis](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ED_010826_ThunderLookVulnerable_ModArt.jpg\"\/)
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