A caveat, before we dive into OKC’s controversial head coach. There’s a lot to coaching that fans, reporters and analysts don’t see and will never see. Coaches manage relationships between players, coaches decide what to emphasize in practice, coaches work on developing young players, and coaches ‘coach’ other coaches. It’s hard to judge how successful a coach is at that even from inside an organization, and nearly impossible from outside.
That said, what we can judge from the outside is how successful a team is, and the Thunder fell well short of where preseason expectations placed them.