Thunder open facility, Jazz lose key player

The Oklahoma City Thunder reopened their practice facility Monday morning to allow their players to receive individual workouts. Sixteen other NBA teams have done the same, making the total to 17 teams opening up their facilities to enable their players to practice.

This is positive news as it is the first of many steps to eventually resume the NBA season since the initial suspension on March 11 when Jazz C Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19.

It will be interesting to see how many, if any, Thunder players take up on the offer and get workouts done in Oklahoma City. The state of Oklahoma currently stands at 5,310 positive COVID-19 cases, with 288 total deaths.

The NBA resuming this season has gained some momentum, but a bunch of hurdles still stand in the way as the league needs to find out how to secure the safety of the players and essential personnel who will need to be around if the season is to start back up.

In other Thunder-related news, Utah Jazz F Bojan Bogdanovic underwent season-ending wrist surgery. Bogdanovic has been the Jazz’s 2nd leading scorer this season, sitting at 20.2 PPG on 44.7/ 41.4/ 90.3 shooting splits. This is a massive loss for the Jazz as the Croatian basketball player has provided a big offensive boost with his outside shooting and shot creation skills and has helped relax the offensive load Donovan Mitchell has had in Utah since his rookie season.

In Mitchell’s three seasons in Utah, Bogdanovic has been his only teammate to average over 20 points per game.

If the NBA does eventually come back, many believe that the rest of the regular season will be scrapped, and the playoffs will start as is. That would mean a First Round matchup between the #4 seed Jazz and #5 seed Thunder would occur.

In 995 minutes with Bogdanovic off the floor, the Jazz has just a 108.3 ORTG, which would rank 17th in the league. The Jazz is the 2nd best team in terms of ORTG with Bogdanovic on the floor at a 115.2 ORTG.

A Jazz-Thunder series would’ve already been a toss-up anyway with Bogdanovic healthy as the teams split their two-game meeting this season. This injury should give the Thunder an edge in the probability of winning this hypothetical series if it were to materialize.