The Oklahoma City Thunder hit the same playoff wall Cade Cunningham faced this spring: when the secondary offense dried up, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had too much to carry. With Jalen Williams out for long stretches and Ajay Mitchell sidelined by a calf strain, Oklahoma City’s postseason scoring depth thinned until one star was left trying to solve everything at once.
That is why the keyword is being searched now. Gilgeous-Alexander was confronting the same problem Cunningham did this postseason, a lack of reliable help behind the lead scorer, and the Thunder’s answer was not a splashy move. It was health. The club’s best path forward is simply getting Williams and Mitchell back on the floor and back to themselves before the next playoff run begins.
Williams and Mitchell were probably the second- and third-best scorers on the Thunder, which made their absences impossible to ignore. Oklahoma City had to play without both for long stretches, and the strain showed up most clearly when the games tightened and every possession mattered. Gilgeous-Alexander could score, but as he put it, “SGA just couldn’t do it all.”
Mitchell’s case says as much about the Thunder’s depth as his own rise. He missed time because of a calf strain after a breakout season, while Williams’ hamstring was not ready by the end of the year. The injuries left Oklahoma City without the kind of second and third options that make a postseason offense harder to guard, and that is the gap the team spent the spring trying to patch.
The contrast with Dallas and Detroit sharpens the point. Cunningham ran into the same lack of secondary offense this postseason, and Detroit’s version of the issue was Tobias Harris, who gave the Pistons some strong offensive games but not enough consistency to carry them over the top. Oklahoma City tried a different route and traded for Jared McCain at this year’s deadline, but the bigger fix still has to come from inside the room.
McCain can be a legitimate playoff performer and a solid offensive option at times, but the Thunder’s real solution remains homegrown. They do not need a wholesale reset. They need Williams healthy, Mitchell healthy and enough balance behind Gilgeous-Alexander so he is not forced to spend another postseason fighting the same battle alone.
