The West-leading Thunder have one big problem

When the Oklahoma City Thunder are eventually eliminated from the NBA playoffs this spring, many pundits will lazily chalk it up to inexperience. After all, weighted by minutes played, the Thunder are the league’s youngest team, with multiple rotation players yet to play a single postseason contest.

But first-place Oklahoma City’s fatal flaw can’t be measured in years or games played. The Thunder’s eventual demise can likely be explained in simpler basketball terms: They’re just not big enough.

From a literal size perspective, the young Thunder entered the season slightly taller than average, and the average height of the team’s current 10-man rotation – after acquiring Gordon Hayward and welcoming Jaylin Williams back from injury – remains a perfectly middling 6-foot-6 (and change). Plus, Rookie of the Year candidate Chet Holmgren stands at 7-foot-1, so Oklahoma City’s Achilles heel doesn’t exactly pop off the page when scanning its roster or studying its formula.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s league-leading 24 drives per game ensure the Thunder consistently touch the paint, and their top-three offense is engineered around those drives. Jalen Williams is already a hyper-efficient three-level scorer. OKC gets to and converts from the rim at fairly average rates, and Holmgren has mostly completed the puzzle on both ends. The big man has proven capable of spacing the floor and protecting the rim while providing a team that often relied on guard-guard – or “small-small” – screening actions with a more traditional screening option.

But after Holmgren, the next-tallest players in head coach Mark Daigneault’s postseason rotation will likely be 6-foot-9 Jaylin Williams and a 6-foot-8 oversized guard in Josh Giddey. And for all of the mismatch power that Holmgren’s lanky, rangy game provides, the wiry 21-year-old is liable to be pushed around by the league’s true behemoths. He also can’t be on the court at all times.

Though it’s been creeping up on them all season, the Thunder’s lack of size was most glaring during a back-to-back in Phoenix and Los Angeles this week. On Sunday, Suns center Jusuf Nurkic pulled down 31 rebounds, a franchise record for a team that once employed prime Charles Barkley. Twenty-four hours later, Oklahoma City had no answer for Lakers All-Star Anthony Davis, who coasted to 24 points and 12 rebounds on 7-of-12 shooting. The ease with which Davis went about his business against Holmgren and company said even more than those numbers ever could.

This lack of heft manifests itself most obviously on the glass, where the Thunder’s otherwise stout defense bleeds second-chance opportunities. Oklahoma City’s 29th-ranked defensive rebound rate of 68.6% is sandwiched between the rates of teams that have won 10 and 17 games. Of the eight worst defensive rebounding teams, the Thunder are the only one currently occupying a top-six seed. Only the Wizards give up more second-chance points.

With Holmgren anchoring things, OKC keeps teams out of the paint and holds opponents to the lowest field-goal percentage at the rim, resulting in a top-five defense that appears playoff-proof on the surface. But the postseason is where flaws are mercilessly exposed and exploited.

Between all the extra shots allowed off rebounds and a defensive scheme that surrenders 3-point attempts, the expected effective field-goal percentage of Thunder opponents pegs OKC as the 21st-ranked defense, according to Cleaning The Glass. Furthermore, since the NBA expanded to 30 teams 20 years ago, the only teams that won championships with bottom-10 defensive rebound rates were the 2013 Heat and the Warriors in 2017 and 2018 – some of the most talented teams ever assembled.

So which West playoff teams are best equipped to exploit the Thunder’s most apparent flaw? Well, almost all of them.

With two 7-footers and a propensity for taking – and making – 3-pointers from the corners, the healthy Timberwolves fit the bill, as the Thunder give up the highest frequency of corner threes. However, a knee injury will sideline All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns for at least a month.

With Nurkic in the middle and shooters all around him, the Suns are an obvious threat. Ditto for the defending champion Nuggets, who boast the sixth-highest offensive rebound rate and feature Nikola Jokic at center, though the reigning Finals MVP is a universal matchup nightmare.

Domantas Sabonis, the league’s leading rebounder for a second straight year, can change a game for the trigger-happy Kings. Clippers center Ivica Zubac ranks seventh in individual offensive rebound rate, while L.A. is one of the league’s best shooting teams. With frontcourt size and a top-eight mark in second-chance points, a Pelicans team featuring Jonas Valanciunas and Zion Williamson would surely cause the Thunder headaches.

But perhaps the two teams Oklahoma City should fear most are the Warriors and Lakers.

After demolishing Los Angeles in November, the Thunder lost three straight to Davis’ Lakers between December and March. No team has beaten OKC as often this season.

As for the Warriors, Golden State is actually the league’s smallest team and starts the 6-foot-6 Draymond Green at center. But don’t be fooled: The Warriors boast the league’s third-best offensive rebound rate and Steph Curry’s club has the shooting to punish Oklahoma City’s scheme. The Thunder won the season series 3-1, but in the only matchup where Gilgeous-Alexander, Holmgren, Curry, and Green collectively took the floor, the Warriors grabbed a whopping 24 offensive rebounds – a rate of 46.2% – and outscored the Thunder by 42 points from 3-point territory. Oklahoma City survived for an overtime victory, but you can see why the Thunder might want to avoid that matchup come April.

If the Thunder remain a top-two seed and the Lakers and Warriors remain play-in teams, either of those veteran-laden squads could present first-round challenges for OKC.

“We have to finish our breakfast before we start acting like we’re on the cusp of something,” general manager Sam Presti famously cautioned on media day. Perhaps the surest sign Oklahoma City has already devoured its first meal is the team’s graduation from feel-good story to nitpicked contender. Such is life when playing at a 57-win pace led by an MVP front-runner.

Of course, the Thunder are still a feel-good story, and they remain ahead of schedule. They’ve recorded 44 wins while the league’s second- and third-youngest teams have combined for 23. The future appears even brighter today than it did when this season tipped off, with more trade capital at their disposal than any of their already inferior adversaries.

Those trade chips can be used over time to address these size concerns, acquire another star, and answer any other questions that might pop up along the team’s journey to the top of the basketball mountain.

But if they don’t reach that summit this year, you’ll know why.

Joseph Casciaro is theScore’s senior content producer.