Trae Young had a rough trip to Oklahoma City over the weekend. The three-time All-Star is one of the NBA’s most electric point guards, capable of offensive eruptions on a nightly basis. But in a 128-104 Hawks loss, he never found a moment of respite as waves of Thunder defenders harassed him up and down the court.

Young was whistled for an offensive foul after pushing off new Thunder guard Alex Caruso.

His passes were intercepted.

And Cason Wallace picked his pocket twice in just over a minute as Oklahoma City turned a close fourth-quarter contest into a blowout.

By the game’s end, Young had tied a career high with 10 turnovers. But that statistic says less about Young than it does about the Thunder, who are outright swarming opponents. It’s not just the Atlanta All-Star—through three games this season, the top five guards to face Oklahoma City have combined for more turnovers than assists.

En route to the West’s best record last season, the Thunder forced turnovers on a league-leading 15.5 percent of opponent possessions; they previously ranked second in their semi-leap season of 2022-23. But they’ve taken an even greater step forward early this year, with a defensive turnover rate of 19.7 percent. In other words, opponents are coughing up the ball every fifth possession against OKC.

Last month, my colleague Michael Pina wrote a piece with the provocative prediction, “The Oklahoma City Thunder may have the best defense in NBA history.” As Pina noted, the Thunder projected so well because of three reasons:

1. They traded Josh Giddey, their weakest defensive link.
2. They retained all of the other important players on their roster, giving them an enviable mix of youth and continuity.
3. They added two more elite defenders in Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein.

Hartenstein hasn’t played yet due to a hand fracture that will keep him sidelined until December, but Caruso is already comfortable in his new digs. “The thing that’s been most impressive is how he’s integrated,” coach Mark Daigneault said in Chicago over the weekend. “It feels like he’s been here forever with the way he’s playing.”

The two-time All-Defensive team honoree has just five points in three games with his new team. But that lack of scoring hasn’t mattered because the Thunder have outscored opponents by 29 points per 100 possessions with Caruso on the court. It’s a small sample, sure, but the early returns confirm all the priors about how awesome the Thunder would be with Caruso.

It wasn’t difficult to predict that Caruso would boost the Thunder’s defense. Both the eye test and the numbers adore his production on that end; the advanced stat DARKO, which blends box score and on/off data, ranks Caruso as the NBA’s top perimeter defender. “He flies around every play, always in the right spot,” says Wallace, Caruso’s new teammate and fellow group chat member. “It’s fun because he’s easy to play off of.”

It makes sense that Caruso would amplify what the Thunder already did well. Over the past four seasons, he improved his team’s defensive turnover rate by an average of 3.2 percentage points when on the court, according to an analysis of Cleaning the Glass data. That places him in an effective tie with Xavier Tillman for the best mark in the league over that span (minimum 1,000 minutes). 

(This very fun stat showcases a who’s who of the NBA’s most effective pests. The top players include Tillman, Caruso, Gary Payton II, Larry Nance Jr., Jose Alvarado, Matisse Thybulle, Tari Eason, Jonathan Isaac, Josh Okogie, Amen Thompson, and T.J. McConnell.)

The Thunder have essentially adopted a simple formula. Take the best team at forcing turnovers, add the best player at forcing turnovers, and magic—or chaos, depending on one’s perspective—will ensue.

When asked about this strength, both Daigneault and his players deflect, saying that turnovers aren’t the goal of their defensive tactics. Rather, they aspire to tough, “disruptive” defense, and if turnovers result from “putting teams in a crowd and making them make decisions,” as Daigneault says, all the better—including for an OKC offense that desires more transition play.

It helps that, with Giddey gone, there are no remaining soft spots or problem positions for opponents to exploit. MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander might be the weakest defender in many Thunder lineups—in part because he’s liable to save energy he needs to exert on offense—yet he won the steals title last year and already has nine swipes in three games this season.

Playing five solid-to-excellent defenders together results in something of a virtuous circle. “At any point in time, we’ve got three to five guys that can guard the other team’s best player or be in a passing lane on the backside,” Caruso says.

It’s easier for Caruso, SGA, and their teammates to gamble because they know they have elite support behind them, whether from fellow perimeter stoppers who can rotate and recover or from Chet Holmgren (and eventually Hartenstein) waiting at the rim. Last season, Holmgren and Hartenstein ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, in lowest field goal percentage allowed at the rim (out of 66 players with at least 250 shots defended).

And the early returns with all those pieces—save Hartenstein—are extraordinary. The Thunder look fast, fearsome, and flexible. It’s not as if their initial opponents are particularly turnover prone. The Bulls averaged the third-fewest turnovers per game last season—but they committed 26 against the Thunder. Taken as a group, Oklahoma City’s three opponents thus far averaged 12.8 turnovers per game last season, but they’ve committed 20.7 per game against OKC. That’s the largest difference in the league.

Will they, as Pina suggested, make a run at the best defense ever? Tops in the 21st century, at least, are the 2003-04 Spurs, who posted a defensive rating 8.5 points lower than the league average, per PBP Stats. The 2007-08 champion Celtics are a close second, at 8.2 points better than average. But it’s become harder to stand out in the pace-and-space era; at 6.2 points better than average, last season’s Timberwolves had the stingiest relative defense since 2020.

Well, in the early going, the Thunder defense registers as 20.7 points better than average. That won’t last. It can’t last. Three games are a tiny portion of 82, and Oklahoma City’s opponents won’t keep shooting 26 percent on 3-pointers over the full season. (On the other hand, the Thunder are at only 28 percent themselves, so they’ll improve as well.) With turnovers, too, OKC’s numbers will decline as the season continues; turnovers are elevated leaguewide at the moment, as is typical early in the season while sloppy teams iron out their kinks.

But there are reasons to expect improvement in the Thunder’s defensive quality, even as their overall numbers regress. Hartenstein’s return stands out: His teams have had a better defensive rating with him on the court in every season of his career, per CtG, with particularly excellent on/off splits ever since he broke out for the Clippers in 2021-22. A fleet of advanced stats ranks him among the most effective defenders in the league.

Hartenstein should fill a crucial role on the Thunder after they ranked 29th in defensive rebounding percentage last season and struggled to keep opponents off the boards in the playoffs. Holmgren looks like an improved rebounder early on—he grabbed a career-high 16 boards against the Bulls—but the Thunder still rank 25th, per CtG, and have resorted to playing wing Jalen Williams at center for spot minutes with Hartenstein and Jaylin Williams injured. (“Big man!” Holmgren joked from his seat next to J-Dub when I asked about this shift. Williams riposted, “That’s why I gained weight.”)

Yet while Hartenstein might be most helpful in fixing a weakness, Caruso is primed to magnify an advantage. Across the NBA, turnovers have dropped over the course of decades, to an all-time low last season—but the Thunder are zagging and turning a strength into a superpower.

So Young might have been the first star point guard to suffer through a truly miserable outing against Caruso, Wallace, SGA, and friends, but he’ll be far from the last. The Thunder will be flying around every play, always in the right spot, forcing oodles of turnovers, all season long.

Zach Kram

Zach writes about basketball, baseball, and assorted pop culture topics.