OKC Thunder’s Billy Donovan, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, And Steven Adams Discuss The Bubble In Orlando

The Oklahoma City Thunder will head to Orlando in less than a week to begin training camp. While we haven’t had the chance to directly hear from members of the Thunder over the past few months, they’ve recently become available for questions. 

Over the past 48 hours, Oklahoma City media has had the opportunity to hear from Billy Donovan, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Steven Adams through video chat. Over the next few days, other players are expected to have virtual media availability as well.  

While there was over an hour of content discussed between these three members of the team, there were several key takeaways that stuck out more than others. 

All 17 players have been in Oklahoma City practicing 

It’s promising to hear that every single player on the roster has been in Oklahoma City putting in work. Head Coach Billy Donovan confirmed this during his virtual media availability.

“It’s one ball, one basket, one coach. Up until today, it has not been mandatory. We’ve had all of our guys back. All of our guys have come in to workout periodically on their own time”

No Thunder player has tested positive for coronavirus during the mandated NBA testing period

During one of the recent media sessions, a team representative confirmed during the recent period in which the league is requiring players to be tested, no member of the Thunder has tested positive for coronavirus, which is extremely promising. Earlier today, Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports reported that 25 players around the league have tested positive, but we have now confirmed that none of those 25 play in Oklahoma City. 

Andre Roberson’s status is still unclear

It’s been almost 900 days since we have seen Andre Roberson on an NBA floor. While we have gotten several promising updates from Sam Presti and Roberson himself recently, Donovan gave his input this week as well.

“It’s hard for me to give a real assessment of where he’s at just because I haven’t seen him play any 5-on-5 or anything like that. But the hope to get to Orlando and once we start start practicing to have him out there and actually find out where he’s at and how he’s doing. In my conversations with Andre, he feels really good, he feels like he’s made really significant progress.”

While this doesn’t really tell us much since it is going to continue being a waiting game with Roberson, at least it wasn’t negative news or another setback announcement.

It could be tough for the Thunder to carry their momentum into Orlando

One of the biggest questions I have had about this team was whether they would be able to carry their momentum into the bubble after such a long hiatus. Before the season was paused, Oklahoma City was one of the hottest teams in the league.

During Steven Adams’ media availability, I asked if that momentum was even possible to carry over or if it would be like starting the season over again.

“The momentum stuff will be hindered, but you can’t really use that as an excuse…I think it’s going to be a start new sort of thing. Whoever is able to just get the chemistry going really quickly, very sharp, that’s the teams that are probably going to do well.”

When asked how difficult it will be for teams to get back into the swing of things physically considering how hard it is to replicate NBA basketball games, Adams placed his bet on his own team figuring that out quickly.

“I’m betting on our team, our team has done relatively well with these sort of things”

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was asked a similar question around whether the team chemistry would be as high in Orlando as it was in March.

“It’ll take a little bit, but I think that’s what the training camp is for. I think with the high character guys on this team, I don’t think chemistry and things like that will be a big issue for us coming back”

It will be fascinating to see how the Thunder come out and perform in these final eight regular season games.

Both Adams and Gilgeous-Alexander have had the luxury of playing in a gym during their time away

Every player during the hiatus has had a very different situation. Some players have full courts in their homes where they were isolated, where others didn’t even have a basketball hoop to utilize at all. What is promising for Thunder fans is that both players we have heard from this week have had access to a court.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t have access at first, but seems to be back into the swing of things now.

“I’ve played pretty much the whole time. For the first part of it, it was more outside stuff because I wasn’t able to get in the gym, but as soon as things started to open back up, I was able to get in the gym. It’s back to normal in terms of basketball.”

Steven Adams, although he was not in the United States for the majority of the last few months, was able to workout not only in a gym, but also on his farm.

“I ended up spending some of the time on the farm…I was getting in workouts and what not in New Zealand.”

He would go on to say that he was able to play a few pickups games while there as well.