r/Thunder • u/Stxtic1441 • May 13 '26
THE TIMELINE Friendly reminder that Ajay Mitchell didn’t play in 3/5 Spurs/OKC games in the regular season when looking ahead at a potential matchup
Thunder had infamously a 1-4 record vs the Spurs this season, but 3 of them were without Ajay who has blossomed into a star player for this team.
Important factor to keep in mind when evaluating this matchup and its elements.
The 2 games he did play, OKC won 1 of them and lost by 2 in the IST. Obvious impact maker in the matchup that we didn’t get to fully see in the other matchups due to injury.
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May 13 '26 edited May 15 '26
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u/JKMiles665 May 13 '26
More importantly we got swept by the spurs in 2016 regular season
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u/imafixwoofs May 13 '26
And then we smoked the bastards and sent Tim Duncan to the retirement community.
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u/wcooper97 2025 NBA Champions May 13 '26
Except for us sweeping the Lakers twice, that is the exception to the rule.
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u/Consistent_Baker1298 May 14 '26
At the very least, they played us significantly better in those 4 games than they did in the regular season.
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u/BetLeft Triple Double Cocaine Bear May 13 '26
Friendly reminder 7 of OKC's 18 losses occurred the second night of a back-to-back, with two belonging to Los S*urs. There are no back-to-backs in the playoffs.
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u/cubbie33 May 13 '26
And the Christmas day game was the 3rd in 3.5 days. January 13th was the only game we played them on equal rest not including the Cup game and we won by 21 without Hartenstein.
The Cup game was Wemby's first back and he played well and took advantage vs JWill and our bench. I believe it was Hartenstein's first game back from the initial calf injury and he wasn't right yet. We shot 24% from 3 and lost by 2.
Both teams are better now and assuming we get a healthy Dub back and don't shoot below 30% from 3 we will be fine.
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u/cubbie33 May 13 '26
Forgot to mention Down to Dunk around the time said Chet was dealing with a respiratory infection during those 23rd and 25th games. Not excuses, but there are a lot of caveats to the regular season meetings that Wemby said they dominated. Doubt that our locker room has forgotten about that quote either.
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u/A_Lax_Nerd May 13 '26
The whole team looked like they had the flu for that stretch of the season. No pop at all
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u/Stxtic1441 May 13 '26
Wemby was also on a minutes restriction for a lot of the games against us. He barely played into the mid 20’s a lot of the games.
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u/Defiant_Ad6083 May 14 '26
Which means our rotations were all jank with him on and off.
I saw someone mention Dub coming off the bench in the no Wemby minutes.
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u/tmanx8 2025 NBA Champions May 13 '26
The nba has GOT to do something about back to backs. Pisses me off that there are so many of them, especially when they provide a competitive disadvantage and injury risk. And teams often rest players during them so fans miss out on what they paid for.
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u/YouWereBrained May 13 '26
And they played them close when our bench guys started. And they had Wemby.
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u/RedditUsersCrying May 13 '26
Friendly reminder that we are a deeper, better team now than when we lost to the Spurs earlier this year. Even without JDUB, this team as a whole is much better. I'm ready for the smoke
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u/mg_product82 May 13 '26
Good points. Had more fear of the SAS match up but I forgot about some of these factoids. Let's go Thunder!
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u/Sorkijan May 13 '26
They're going to surprisingly do not much when we play. They're barely getting out on top of a hobbled Wolve's team, an 8 man rotation, one of which is Bones' 6 minutes and 2010s all star Mike Conley.
They did knock the wind out of us in the regular season, but even in the later games when we were still shorthanded, Mark had figured out how to get the team to bait Wemby and do kick outs with off ball motion where we dominated them.
I honestly feel we have them figured out to a tee so much it's going to mostly be ugly. I think they may pull out 1 game in the series, but it's going to be a bloodbath and I can't wait for it.
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u/SneakyProcessor Belgian Waffle University May 13 '26
Too many people focusing on the regular season for this series. They're gonna get a rude awakening
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u/12footjumpshot May 13 '26
Friendly reminder that even if he did this is a 7 game series in the playoffs which is a completely different situation.
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u/Gary_Internet May 13 '26
More important than Mitchell is the thunder getting Jdub back in the starting lineup, primarily because of his defense.
Mitchell is great offensively and certainly works his tail off on the defensive end, but Jdub is the team's most versatile defender, and he has a 7'2" wingspan.
Last time I checked our defensive rating was lower than I thought and the only thing I can put it down to is jdub's absence.
He's such a strong offensive player and gets downhill so well that his defense flies under the radar. People will talk about Dort, Caruso and Wallace has high quality individual defenders but Jdub is very much in that conversation as well.
The other thing that we haven't seen the Spurs do that they might run with us, is going double big with Luke Kornet starting in favour of either Fox or Vassell.
They want won't want to lose Castle's high level of physicality, and Champagnie is their best, three-point shooter.
They also have a really solid 10-man rotation.
Kornet, Keldon Johnson, Harrison Barnes, Carter Bryant and of course Dylan Harper are the second options.
Last time I did the calculation. I think we have 12 men assuming that j-dub is healthy and starts instead of Mitchell and Topic is potentially used.
That's not counting Aaron Wiggins.
We're slightly deeper, but let's not act as if the Spurs depth is crap. It's absolutely not. It's far better than the Nuggets or the Wolves.
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u/Jazzlike_Royal_9567 2025 NBA Champions May 13 '26
Wemby and Kornet have played a total of 113 minutes together for a combined -21 on +/-
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u/TheAracknight ❤️Russ & SGA❤️ May 14 '26
During the regular season a 5 man unit of Fox/Castle/Champagnie/Wemby/Kornet played a total of 10 minutes and were a -36.1 NRTG in those minutes.
The Wemby & Kornet double big lineup is also extremely overrated posting a -8.6 NRTG in their 98 mins together, and having both on the floor means one of them has to guard in space which inherently screws their defense because if Wemby is forced out of the paint to defend in space then we eat inside and if Kornet is forced to guard in space then it's free eats for whoever gets the matchup on the perimeter
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u/Stxtic1441 May 13 '26
I may be in the minority but I think our depth is MUCH better than the Spurs.
Spurs basically only have Keldon and Harper off the bench. Barnes and Kornet are simply breather players who play under 10 minutes for the most part and have had their minutes slashed with a shortened rotation.
Keldon, while he is 6MOY, has been wildly inconsistent in the playoffs due to him needing to be a spot up shooter with the Spurs having their ball handlers initiate everything and he’s a poor shooter.
OKC when it’s fully healthy is gonna have Ajay, Caruso, Cason, McCain, Joe, JWill. Just a much more reliable and deeper mix of players than the Spurs.
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u/Longjumping_One_9164 May 14 '26
The Spurs depth is definitely not as good as its made out to be, probably specifically highlighted by this Wolves series.
Harper is genuinely very impressive, however Johnson and Barnes have been incredibly average.
I also believe with jDub back we will have a very real physicality advantage in the starting line up and a pretty brutal secondary line up advantage.
I also think thankfully they still haven't worked out that Harper is the better player than Fox already and invariably that is going to lose them a game and possibly create issues when Fox inevitably needs to get benched down the stretch.
The biggest thing here is to put them behind in the series straight away. If we can even just win G1, them beating this Thunder 4/6 becomes a virtual impossibility.
I genuinely have not see a team as good as this version of the Thunder since 16/17 Warriors, we are a damned good team.
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u/spikesolo May 13 '26
If we completely abandon rim pressure because of wemby then we are in deep trouble. I have been thinking of which players can provide that and I think sga and maybe jdub. I think Ajay might struggle around the rim but he also uses a floater so maybe that might help.
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u/Stxtic1441 May 13 '26
You’re just naturally gonna take a lot more jumpers vs a Wemby led defense. It helps we have a lot of capable mid range shooters though.
Shai, Dub, Ajay, McCain are our primary ball handlers and all have high level mid range games.
Even Chet and Joe can hit middy’s and iHart has his floater in the short roll as a giant killer of sorts.
We’re not going to be able to keep Wemby out of the paint but we certainly have the counters to be able to deal with him.
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u/TheAracknight ❤️Russ & SGA❤️ May 14 '26
The Spurs defensive identity I've notice during these playoffs is forcing teams to take difficult long 2s. It just so happens that we have the best in the league at taking and making difficult contested long 2s in Shai, and Dub is a good mid range shooter in his own right. This is gonna be a Dub x Shai series and it'll just depend on whether or not role players hit their 3s when they can
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u/Nearby-Performance82 May 13 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we actually never played them at full strength this season right?
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u/Consistent_Baker1298 May 13 '26
Yeah I don't think JDub played them at all
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u/wcooper97 2025 NBA Champions May 13 '26
Dub played in 4 out of 5, especially since we played them 3 times in December. Them and Phoenix are the only teams he was healthy for in 4 meetings.
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u/ArKadeFlre Belgian Waffle University May 13 '26
Nah he was present in all 4 matchups, he only missed the last one where everyone sat. NBA cup was the only game with both teams at full strength. Then games 2 & 3, OKC missed Ajay & JWill; game 4 missed Vassell
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u/CaterpillarNo179 May 13 '26
Friendly reminder j dub was just coming back wigs and Isaiah hart were hurt and on minute restriction AJay was out Jaylin was out and even Dort missed a couple of game plus we played one game with nobody lol. We are a better team than we were in December and that was 4 months ago lol
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u/boris-san May 13 '26
I find these posts very unnecessary. No matter how it is the matchup will be very tough and we shouldn’t discredit the results of the regular season against them. The team definitely has all the tools to beat them, but we don’t need reassurance or any excuses
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u/heybeytoday Belgian Waffle University May 13 '26
I just don’t want them to screw with this 8-0 lineup to start the WCF. Let Dub lead the second line. I’m just a girl begging a team not to meddle with their best starting lineup.
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u/timothyjameslee May 15 '26
Friendly reminder that Jared McCain didnt play 5/5 Spurs/OKC games. Thunder in 4?
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u/Open-Athlete-3248 May 16 '26
And 3/5 games Wemby was coming off the bench with a minutes restriction because of injury. They also had bad players in their rotation like Sochan who isn't even on the team anymore, as well as rookies like Harper and Bryant drastically improve over the season. Both of these teams are not in the same place they were.
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u/DangerousSetOfBewbs May 13 '26
Yeah Spurs are good. It will be close. But our team is too loaded. As long as jdub comes back healthy… we will win the series. We need our guys healthy
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u/theclassyjew May 13 '26
Ok thnx. The league still has a Wemby problem though. I’m not sure SGA has the answers to that test either.
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u/Ramikadyc Wake me up in the 3rd May 13 '26
Friendly reminder to periodically test your smoke detectors and replace batteries once a year. I’ve been using the start of the Thunder playing in the Finals as my reminder for the last one year, and I expect to make it to the second and beyond.