There’s a big opportunity for an OKC wing player to step up this season — perhaps bigger than the team would like.
When Andre Roberson played last year, the Thunder blew it’s opponents out of the water, suffocating teams with one of the best defenses in the NBA. That defense was a major part of OKC’s success in the months of December and January, when they briefly looked like contenders (or at least like the type of team that would be contenders in an era without the nigh unstoppable Golden State Warriors). When Roberson was lost for the season, the team’s defense fell back to average, and OKC played like a team that didn’t know what it was.