For the first three months of the regular seasons, things looked bleak for 20-year-old Aleksej Pokusevski as his minutes drastically decreased from his rookie year and was even struggling against G League competition during many of his Oklahoma City Blue assignments.
It was fair for Thunder fans to wonder if Pokusevski had a future beyond his rookie contract in Oklahoma City. Many knew that Pokusevski was going to be a long-term project who needed a few seasons of development to be molded into an NBA player, but being arguably the worst player in the league started to turn some fans off with his pie in the sky potential.
Well, things began to change starting February 1. After nearly a month between NBA games, Pokusevski was recalled for the Blue for the final time this season as he began a current 21 game stretch of looking like a completely different player.
In that span, Pokusevski has averaged 11.5 points on 44.3 percent shooting along with seven rebounds and 2.6 assists. Pokusevski, who was one of the least efficient shooting players in the league, suddenly started shooting respectively enough.
Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault has self-admitted to coaching Pokusevski a little bit harder compared to the rest of the roster and that style has paid its dividends with this stretch of nearly two months now. Daigneault has credited Pokusevski’s ability to limit his role and focus on just a few things to be productive at instead of trying to be good at everything. This simplification of an offensive role has really helped Pokusevski out a ton and has put him back on track to being a competent NBA player.
Expectations for Pokusevski have graduated from him just showing a couple of flashes here and there to now being asked to consistently produce game in and game out in the form of showing tangible results. And while development isn’t always linear, like Daigneault always preaches, it appears Pokusevski has taken the right steps in his development plan.
“We’ve really raised the bar and we’ve pushed him pretty hard and we’ve only got a better version of him,” said Daigneault earlier this month.
Now it’s still premature to run a victory lap about the Pokusevski pick hitting, but things certainly look a lot better now than they did just six weeks ago. The next big step for Pokusevski now involves him being able to do this for the entirety of the season instead of just the back-half, as been the case in the first two seasons of his professional career. Hopefully the 2022-23 season will not require Pokusevski to get assigned multiple extensive G League assignments in order to turn the gears up or else that might not spell a favorable forecast for his future with the Thunder.
Perhaps Pokusevski never reaches his crazy high ceiling, but if the Thunder can mold out this long-term project into an actual NBA rotation player who can contribute to a winning team, then that’s win for the franchise and coaching staff with the former 17th overall pick.
