As Oklahoma City chases a championship, these rising guards are primed for a massive leap following their first healthy offseason alongside the league’s deepest core.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are just over a month away from starting their quest for another championship. This team will be a favorite to take home the Larry O’Brien, but being the favorite is the easy part. Following through on those predictions much more difficult. Since 2019, it's been very hard for teams to win multiple titles in today's NBA, but the Thunder are uniquely set up to do that.
You have the back-to-back MVP on your team. At worst, you have the 3rd-best coach in the league. You have the deepest roster in the NBA, and health permitting, you will get back your second-best offensive player who barely saw the court the entirety of last season.
One thing people are overlooking, though, is the development of Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain. Mitchell averaged roughly 13 points per game with three rebounds and nearly four assists, while McCain provided an additional scoring spark along with around two rebounds and an assist per contest. With the Thunder's depth and top-end skill, if Mitchell and McCain simply match their production from last year, it might be enough to get OKC back to the Finals.
The greatest news if you're a Thunder fan is that you should actually expect them both to be better this coming season.
Let's start with McCain.
McCain was a deadline addition for OKC this past season. This was just McCain's second year in the NBA after being a one-and-done player at Duke. After dazzling everyone, McCain sustained an injury that kept him out for the entirety of the 2024-25 season in Philadelphia.
While McCain looked like a budding star, his injury buried him under the young backcourt pieces that Philadelphia acquired. By the time McCain got back and finished his second season in the NBA with the Thunder, he had only played 90 regular-season NBA games.
Young NBA players often take their largest on-court leaps between their first few seasons. Well, that should absolutely be the expectation for McCain as well.
This is his first full NBA offseason in which he has been healthy, and he trained with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Canada and seems to be participating in other pickup runs with current NBA players. McCain has already proved his worth in OKC, but he’s about take another leap as he seems to have firmly entrenched himself in OKC’s backcourt.
Much of the same can be said for Ajay Mitchell.
Throughout his short NBA career, injuries have been the problem. Mitchell is a guy who impacted winning in OKC the second he took the court, and we saw this past postseason that he is not just a regular-season guy. His game really does translate to the postseason, where he was often the second main ball handler/creator with the injuries the Thunder sustained.
Much like McCain, Mitchell has only played 93 regular-season games with OKC. He is an older player, as he spent multiple years in college. Between season 1 and season 2, we saw growth on the defensive side of the ball from Mitchell, as well as the sharpening of his offensive tools that he flashed his rookie season before he was injured.
Mitchell has posted multiple videos of training sessions showing him working on his outside jump shot. While his three-point percentage isn’t horrible (34.7%), an improvement there would make him one of the more complete offensive players OKC has on their roster.
If Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain improve even marginally, they will prove to be a large part of why the Oklahoma City Thunder will be very difficult to beat.
