Scouting one-pager: Oklahoma City Thunder (OKC)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,307 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a genuine shot-maker: +14.2 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Chet Holmgren (1.18 xPPS on 779 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: I. Hartenstein - S. Gilgeous-Alexander - L. Dort - C. Holmgren - J. Williams (+28.5/100 over 239 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| OKC | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.123 | 1.091 | +0.031 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.104 | 1.097 | +0.007 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +1.9 | -0.5 | +2.4 |
| Rim share | 28.0% | 28.4% | -0.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 10.8% | 10.0% | +0.7 pp |
| Three share | 42.6% | 41.5% | +1.1 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 24.3% | 25.9% | -1.6 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.9% | 1.8% | +0.1 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Shai Gilgeous-Alexander | 1,321 | 1.194 | 1.023 | +17.1 | +14.2 | +6.2 |
| Chet Holmgren | 779 | 1.227 | 1.178 | +4.9 | +3.6 | +5.2 |
| Ajay Mitchell | 590 | 1.073 | 1.028 | +4.5 | +2.9 | +4.0 |
| Cason Wallace | 584 | 1.036 | 1.139 | -10.4 | -7.0 | +1.9 |
| Isaiah Joe | 543 | 1.243 | 1.106 | +13.7 | +7.5 | +2.0 |
| Aaron Wiggins | 536 | 1.041 | 1.108 | -6.7 | -4.4 | -0.3 |
| Luguentz Dort | 524 | 1.015 | 1.108 | -9.3 | -5.8 | -1.9 |
| Jalen Williams | 446 | 1.020 | 1.068 | -4.8 | -3.4 | +0.8 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| I. Hartenstein - S. Gilgeous-Alexander - L. Dort - C. Holmgren - C. Wallace | 167 | 350 | +18.9 |
| S. Gilgeous-Alexander - L. Dort - C. Holmgren - J. Williams - C. Wallace | 126 | 286 | +24.8 |
| I. Hartenstein - S. Gilgeous-Alexander - L. Dort - C. Holmgren - J. Williams | 113 | 239 | +28.5 |