The Thunder have the STEAL of the draft...

The Thunder, housing an assassin that the rest of the league has yet to learn about, but trust me, they soon will. As Bane said, you merely adopted the darkness. I was born in it. That is where the Thunder were a week ago with their harsh injury circumstances. And out of the darkness has risen another candidate for a breakout with Oklahoma City. Rookie Bennett Sturtz, drafted out of Iowa, 16th overall pick. Presti trades up to get him. And he was not anywhere near anyone's radar, asked someone to go to Oklahoma City. It raised a lot of critics, a lot of thoughts that, hey, maybe this wasn't the best pick for Sam Presti. And you know, the first three games of the regular season, you could have said very early on, I might be right, right? But I think that now people are seeing that that thought is very, very wrong. Bennett Sturtz, he is another one for Sam Presti that looks like he is going to be an absolute nail. The Thunder winning back-to-back games against the Cleveland Cavaliers. And last night was the very best performance in the young career of Bennett Sturtz. A career high, 16 points in the game. And it was much more than just... His point total that makes this worthwhile and noteworthy here today. He did everything right in this basketball game, and if he continues on this development path just under 10 games into his rookie season, it's going to be really, really scary for the rest of the NBA. Thunder Rookies got a ton of opportunity last night with Adai Mara earning his first career start and Bennett Sturtz coming off the bench to play 21 minutes in this game I think that for a lot of people, you draft a guy that looks like just a pure shooter. Well, he has done it as of late, and the concerns of his defense, they are coming along as well. As you see this play that he makes last night, reading the eyes of James Harden, going coast to coast, and he didn't want to embarrass anybody else in the arena. That's why he didn't go up with a slam, because no one else in there or in the NBA would have ever been able to top the dunk package that he obviously would have been able to pull out there. I think people are starting to realize, you know what, the nerds, those that kind of really went into the weeds on this Bennett Burtz selection in this past draft, they may be right about this dude. And the things that stand out right away is that over these last three games, double-digit points, he's shooting 58, nearly 59% from three, his offensive rating has been off the charts since Monday, and he has taken care of the basketball. He's been showing an ability to To score off the catch, he even had one last night where he gets a pass, he looks like he could have popped it at the top of the key for a deep three, he pump fakes, he drives left, gets a step back three, nails it for one of his four threes that he hit in the game. His first half spark was one that was felt heavily with this team. Mark Dagnall praising Bennett Burtz last night. Really good. Let it rip was a threat, and he's learning how to move aggressively off the ball. Compared him and what he's been able to do to what Jared McCain has done with his career. Obviously, J-Mac has had a bit of a shooting slump here over the last four games. You'd hope that he'd be able to figure that out. But Bennett Burtz, he has been the guy that has picked up the slack in the three-point shooting department. While Jared McCain hasn't been able to shoot it, this has been your most reliable three-point sniper. And I'm going to say, boys and girls, he's only going to get better. I mean, fully going to get better. And this five-game run shows the sample size of what he's able to do with extended periods of time. As you see, his first three games, he's averaging less than a point per game. And now in these last five, just look at the chunks that he's been able to do. And then you see the minutes that he's played here as well, and he's been getting so much extra leash, and the points obviously are coming along with it. And another quote here from Mark Dagnall, getting an opportunity these rookies are, and they are delivering for us. And Aymar did it. Bennett Burtz did it. Can't wait to see Thomas Sorber do it when that time comes. Who knows when that will be? You see the three-pointers made from Bennett Burtz. He's made three-plus in each of the last three games, and he has kind of started to get his bearings underneath him very, very quickly. The Cavaliers were doing what I think a lot of teams would like to do to the Thunder this season, and that is make life difficult for Shea, force him to really grind it out and try to get to his spots, which he did. I mean, he put up 42 again last night, like the 43 he scored on Monday, but they want to force the other guys around him to beat you. And Bennett starts. Putting up a bulk of points last night, right alongside Kenrich Williams, who started this game yesterday, and he had the best game of his season so far. But Bennett Sturtz and the lethality that he's shown here, I think I might have just made that word up, but the lethality maybe of what he has done. This is going to become part of a scout for how teams have to decide that they are going to defend this Thunder offense. It's undeniable, this five-game run that he is on, it isn't going to stay at the point where he's shooting 50% from three every single rolling three-game span. No, it's not. This dude has much more than just a pulse in the NBA. I mean, this guy has a blossoming career on his hands, and the Thunder could not be more thrilled about this. I mean, how could you not be, right? This is best-case scenario for OKC to pick up the pieces when you're down and you're not going to have several of your creators this season. There is no doubt that this makes the Thunder... Much more dangerous this season. You see where he lives with the basketball, where he shoots the ball, is the Thunder's biggest need offensively. Cohesiveness in the perimeter game is going to be the biggest weakness for Oklahoma City this year. When you consider no case in Wallace, who was your 3 and D specialist, he's not going to play. And you've got, obviously, J-Dub as well, who was a huge floor spacer. Someone has to help space the floor. Shea can shoot from everywhere. AJ is usually really good attacking downhill, who is going to be the three-point sniper, and Bennett Sturtz is showing it. Helps in a multitude of ways, punishing doubles on Shea, forcing teams to have to guard the whole floor, turning an open catch into a quick shot, creating his own look, all of the things that we have seen, and if you want to get in low on something here on Kalshi right now, let me make this a little bit bigger for you guys. Bennett Sturtz, a 1% chance for Rookie of the Year winner. If you threw $50 on this on Kalshi, you would win $4,675. Another trade on here would be Adai Mara, who has a 2% chance at winning Rookie of the Year, and you would get $2,339 if that one were to go through as well. Today's video is sponsored by Kalshi Put-In-Code Digest NBA, and you get $55 after your first $25 trade on the app. You're trading against other users, not against the house. You can do it on sports. You can do it on games within sports, on events, on long-term futures types of stuff. You can do stuff outside of sports, music, pop culture, you name it. Go find it down there below. Click the link. Kalshi, official partner of the NBA as well. But the early season efficiency for Ben Sheppard has been eye-opening for the rest of the league. And, I mean, green, green, green. Ho, ho, ho, green giant right there in the middle. Look at the true shooting. Look at the three-point percentage. Look at the field goal percentage. This dude is in the top 35 in the NBA in all of those things. Making his mark on this team and making a case for significantly more minutes going forward. A guy that could command as many as 20 plus minutes per game this whole season when you consider what the guys don't have right now. And the thing that's really weird, and a lot of this comes down to... His first couple of games were when the Thunder were basically walking aimlessly in an abyss, unaware of what their season was going to look like. Sheppard gets a minutes increase as soon as Dubb, Kaysen, and then Caruso gets his ankle injury. But those two big guys go down. And at that point, I think the whole franchise was reeling for about five or six days. I think that the guys are restabilized. They're having fun. They're putting Louis Vuitton hats on Nick Gallo yesterday. I think the vibes are high in OKC once again, and Ben Sheppard, his net rating has been worse on the floor than off the floor, but I think these last two games have showed you what his potential really is, and his offensive rating when he is out there, it is better than when he is not. Defensively, that is gonna be his biggest test here going forward, and so we'll see exactly what that can look like, and you see what the Thunder's issues are so far this season, And your biggest problems... Far and away are shooting. Field goal percentage, three-pointers made just in bulk, and then facilitating an offense that can knock down shots that Shea gives them. That is the biggest struggle, and Ben Sheppard has the chance to make all of those things better going forward. What I would say is he's earned 25 minutes a night. You put him alongside another guard, and he's going to make a defense respect him. And if he can be a strong defender, or if he can at least have some strong defenders around him, I see no reason why Ben Sheppard can't be a strong candidate at some point here in the midseason for a sleeper rookie of the year type of situation. What we're going to be watching next, the biggest thing for me is consistency going forward. Can he turn this 5-game run into a 15-game run, into a 25-game run, into a 50-game run? Can we see some more defensive improvements with Alex Caruso coming back and with other guys? To help lead him along, and then obviously the larger sample sizes in the different matchups as well. As we wrap up today's video, I want you guys to give me your thoughts down below in the comments on Benet Cordell. Are you fully convinced that Sam Presti's done it again? Do you need to see more? Are you cautiously optimistic, or are you somewhere else on that radar? Let me know in the comments and for our comment spotlight here for today's video. This comes from Alejandro. Personally, I'm just going to sit back with my box of popcorn and watch as Sam Presti does his thing. Make a move and once again shock the NBA world. And you know what? His move might have just been drafting Bennett Sturtz into that 16th overall slot when nobody thought he was going to be taken there. And now he has become an absolute baller for Oklahoma City. If you have not been in on our subscriber goal as of late as well, Looking to get to 11K subscribers here in the near future. We are still about 150 away as of right now. So if you're enjoying the content, if you're enjoying the live streams, we will have a live stream schedule coming out later tonight. I will post that on our posts tab on the channel. You can see all the games that we're going to go live. And so yeah, go subscribe, hop along for the journey for the season because it's going to be a fun and unique year for Oklahoma City and Bennett Sturtz has certainly been a bright spot. So we'll see you guys with more content later here on the channel.