came away from the deal on top<\/a> what with the Bulls shelling out a lucrative $100 million deal in his direction, through these early stages of the new season there’s a case to be made that Sam Presti and company may be suffering from their most severe case of the “what could have beens.”<\/p>\nThunder proven wrong about Josh Giddey’s shooting abilities<\/p>\n
To be fair to the organization, there was never any doubt about the overall talent that Giddey possesses as a player. After all, the man boasts a pure floor general’s style of play while measuring in with a traditional wing’s build at 6-foot-7.<\/p>\n
Such a combination is seemingly every team’s dream in this position-less era of the NBA.<\/p>\n
The only real issue Oklahoma City ever had with the point guard’s game was his seeming inability to consistently shoot the ball, particularly from beyond the arc and in catch-and-shoot sets.<\/p>\n
Throughout his tenure with the Thunder, Giddey shot a rather pedestrian 31.0 percent from deep and just 34.4 percent in catch-and-shoot scenarios.<\/p>\n
It was because of this that the Aussie was deemed an ill-fitting talent alongside the kick-out, drive-oriented trio of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren.<\/p>\n
However, fast forward to 2025-26, and it appears that this once nonexistent skill set is something that’s leading the charge to yet another career-best year for Giddey.<\/p>\n
Not only is he posting sensational averages of 22.0 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 8.0 assists for the 5-0 Bulls, but he’s also splashing home on 45.5 percent of his shots from deep, a mark that skyrockets to a whopping 63.6 percent when off the catch<\/p>\n
Clearly, something has been fixed both with Giddey’s shooting stroke and overall approach to the scoring aspect of the game since his move to the Windy City.<\/p>\n
Though this still shouldn’t make the Thunder regret their decision to move on from the 23-year-old, it does have both the franchise and fanbase questioning where this production was during his three-year stint in the Sooner State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this point, there should be zero second-guessing when it comes to the trade that sent Josh Giddey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-259081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}