This will SAVE the Thunder's season...

The Thunder are currently dealing with a very unprecedented situation. Two starters done presumably for the year, week one, but that may not necessarily mean what people think it does. Well, teams around the league would probably pack it in, losing two high-impact starters, including one that's an all-NBA player, another one that led the league in steals last year in Cason Wallace. The Thunder still have plenty of reinforcements to achieve, plenty of the things that they set out to do even as far as making a deep playoff run and potentially winning a championship there is a new primary x-factor on this team you could say going into now what is going to be such a strange season for Oklahoma City and we saw it firsthand last night in the first game of the post J-Dub and Cason injury era obviously J-Dub with his fractured fibula and with his dislocated ankle he is going to be out for six plus months presumably going to have to have surgery Cason and Wallace of course having his labrum tear in his non-shooting shoulder and he is going to be out for assumably six plus months although i think that there is some hope kind of going around on social media right now this tweet right here from jeff stotts that came out earlier today since 05 there's been one recorded case of a player tearing their labrum in season undergoing surgery and returning that same year Nicholas Batum was the only one back in 09 and funny enough his injury happened on October 25th just like Cason Wallace's did and I think that the reaction from a lot of Thunder fans is so you're telling me there's a chance well I'm not going to hold out too much hope on that front of things but the Thunder got a win last night against a very mediocre lackluster Suns team but a new Thunder X Factor has arrived onto the scene and honestly using the term arrived probably isn't even the best phrase to use for Thunder third-year guard A.J. Mitchell. Career-high 30 points, plus 18 plus minus, 10 of 16 from the floor, and I mean, just look at what this man was doing all game. Showing off the same bag that made him such a threat against the Lakers in that playoff series, getting downhill, making acrobatic layup after acrobatic layup, and it was just textbook A.J. Mitchell and so now all kind of scopes and sites are going to be pointed at whether or not the Thunder can survive without several of their most important players and if there's anyone that can step up and help lead the charge, it absolutely is A.J. Mitchell. He was the player of the game last night and we're going to talk about why he is so vital to this team's success and why people out there should not be throwing in the towel on this team. For any team in the NBA if you have an all-NBA player suffer a catastrophic injury and another starter basically be announced for the same exact type of major injury and gonna miss almost the whole season your chances of winning a championship would shoot down to the basement but the Thunder they've dropped four percent in their title odds on Kalshi but they still are second behind the Spurs so if you were to trade $50 right now you'd get $2.36 if the Thunder were able to win the NBA finals and other teams as well you would see any chances of having a best regular season record those kinds of things all thrown out the window but the Thunder still right now overwhelming favorites to have the best record in the league at the end of the regular season even with the J-Dub and Case in injuries you can go find that on Kalshi they're sponsoring today's video go click the link down below put in code digest NBA you're going to be trading against other users not against a house like a traditional sports book would give you you can trade on sporting events You can trade on pop culture, music, weather, all different things down there as well. So go check them out. But SGA, he was incredibly complimentary of AJ Mitchell last night, and it's for good reason, because this really shouldn't be a quote-unquote emergence or a player that is coming out of the woodworks that nobody could have seen coming, because AJ Mitchell was an incredibly important piece of the Thunder team last year. Whatever you need from him, he provides at a high level. expects the same thing from AJ going forward if guys are out and the team needs more scoring he's gonna do so if they need defending he's gonna do the same thing as well and the Thunder beating Phoenix last night in a game where it was the trio of guards that helped get you there AJ SGA and Jared McCain don't forget Isaiah Hartenstein's 15-13 double-double or Adi Mara's 11-10 double-double as well and here's what AJ had to say after that game in the post game when he talked with Nick Gallo prayers up for the guys that are hurt it's hard to see those guys go down and see how much they've worked but we've got their back and that is really what needs to be the theme of this under team this year these guys need to have their back more than any other that you could see this team's got to be resilient when you consider the long-term injuries Alex Caruso just added more fuel to the fire yesterday when he leaves with a confirmed ankle sprain on his right foot would imagine that will keep him out for several games you got AJ Mitchell moving into the starting lineup now in what seems like a pretty full-time role. Obviously, you also, along with that, have the youngsters that aren't going to be able to play until who knows when. Thomas Sorber, Nikola Topić, Chet Holmgren, he missed some load management stuff with some knee tendinitis. So this team is falling apart injury-wise even more than last year, and it's literally been less than a week. And so here was your starting five last night for the Thunder, and they were able to get it done against a playoff team from last season. And I don't think the Suns are that bad like I mean they played horrible last night and these boys absolutely brought the clamps to Devin Booker I mean he had the worst game I've ever seen him have three points after he scored 43 against Golden State the Thunder defense has locked down team's primary options this season even without Kason and J-Dub now in this past game the Thunder have got plenty of options they're 4-0 now to start this season and who knows how long this will last I mean you're one of the last handful of unbeaten teams left in the Western Conference one of I think the second team all time I saw yesterday that started 3-0 or 4-0 or better in three consecutive seasons so that's pretty incredible but you know more than anything with the actual result last night for me is the growth from last year for AJ leading pretty directly to bulk scoring opportunities this year and last season now with his growth all of a sudden that much more important than what we even knew at the time you saw AJ Mitchell become a prominent sixth man player of the year type of favorite type of front runner for this season and what he did to emerge last year could not be more important at this point in time obviously leapt from six and a half points to 13 and a half points in the regular season starts in you know some pretty important games last year and gets the career high now this past game last night so the baseline for AJ Mitchell I think should be even higher as a bulk scorer than what his chart from last year shows and let me pull it up kind of in this different angle for you guys to be able to see the true numbers he was obviously incredibly efficient just like SGA he's you see all the green that he's got where he's in the top 15 percentile and steals and you know plus minus assists all these things and and we're gonna I mean obviously this stuff matters I think one of the more important things of note here as well is that AJ has started for this team plenty of times last season and it was when J-Dub was out right so you didn't have J-Dub Kason obviously is another one you add on to that but AJ Mitchell is 24 and 1 in his career as a starter if you include last night that's the best record by a starter in NBA history, and that is in 25 games. And when you pair him up with SGA, when those two guys can complement each other in the backcourt, truly special things happen. I mean, this right here is exhibit A. This is from last season when the Thunder had both Shea and A.J. Mitchell on the floor together, plus 18 and a half as a duo in nearly 750 minutes. And you see that's better than any time when it was just Shea and no A.J., better than any time where it was just A.J. and no Shea obviously and then certainly way better than when both of those guys were off the floor so this duo last season as a playmaking guard tandem was one of the best duos the Thunder had and so now we're going to get to see it in a full bulk display and we're going to see AJ kind of continue to follow this Jalen Brunson development path right I mean I've made videos on this in the past last season saying year one to year two the numbers look pretty comparable for AJ Mitchell and Jalen Brunson. Honestly, even better for A.J. Mitchell. And the biggest thing that you saw from Brunson from year three to year four was that he started to get looks in the starting lineup. And A.J. Mitchell, now you see that he's going to get insanely more opportunities to score. He is going to be relied on so much more, even when SGA is not on the floor. I mean, you're going to need A.J. to help carry this thing through in the SGA list, obviously J-Dub list, Cason list minutes. someone's got to bring the ball up the floor and AJ Mitchell can be the guy that does it and so honestly for me if AJ starts this whole season and and has the year that I expect him to have folks I think that he could look closer to Jalen Brunson year four this season average 16 and a half points a game he was 37 percent from beyond the arc 50 percent from the field like I see that kind of season in year three for AJ Mitchell I wanted to know your guys's thoughts down below let me know how you guys feel about all of this what do you think AJ's new ceiling is now in this bulk scoring role do you see him as an all-star caliber breakout type of guard around the league do you see him as a solid full-time starter that won't get any of those honors but can be a reliable player or do you see it as something else let me know down below and while you're down there leaving a comment go subscribe if you're enjoying all the content staying in the loop on all the thunder updates and you're going to be getting game by game breakdowns you're going to get any breaking news you're going to get fun little videos here and there you're going to get all the shorts you're going to get live streams we had a great one last night there was nearly 20,000 total viewers in the live stream over the course of the game go help us hit our 11k subscriber goal go subscribe down below and if you get in a good comment there's a pretty good chance that I'll put it in our comment spotlight this was the one from today that I'm going to throw in there if you make me laugh there's a good chance I'm going to shout you out in the video. And that was his reaction to the confirmation of J-Dub's and Kaysen Wallace's injury. That fibula fracture, the dislocated ankle for J-Dub, and the torn labrum for Kaysen just fell to my knees at Brahms. And then this is J-Dub. This is pretty much the only thing that he's said on social media at all since everything went down. The Thunder, they were honoring J-Dub on the Devon Tower in OKC, illuminating it with his number eight and he just commented on it and said throw a 22 on there too in honor of Kaysen Wallace and i think that's a really good point i think people are so held up as they should be on the the traumatic nature of j-dubs injury and this adding on to what he has been through and that i think people in the thunder community are going to continue to rally behind him because that's what we do for each other this community loves each other and takes care of each other but people don't forget about another guy who is gonna have kind of a similar journey in Kaysen Wallace. Don't forget about Kaysen because he's going through some similar stuff right now as well. But that's kind of the video for today. The X Factor being AJ Mitchell. Again, let me know what you thought of his 30-point career high performance down below in the comments. Appreciate you guys for tuning in. You guys have been so supportive as of late, even through all of the horrible, horrible, horrible circumstances the team has gone through in the last two days. We'll see you guys with more content at Thunder Digest.