As the NBA season nears the playoffs, it looks like Aussie star Josh Giddey is finally hitting his straps.
Giddey’s Oklahoma City reached 50 wins for the season for the first time since 2015/16 with a 119-112 win over the New Orleans Pelicans as the 21-year-old Aussie finally answered some questions for the side.
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Giddey’s 2023/24 season has been a nightmare, seemingly going backwards for the first time in his NBA career.
It saw his playing time slashed and talk about the youngster being a trade piece as OKC’s young brigade look to return to the playoffs for the first time in three seasons.
Despite being a key piece in the Thunder’s rebuild over the past two seasons, Giddey appeared to be the odd one out and saw his form lag, going from 14.9 points per game before this season to 11.8 in 2023/24, 7.9 rebounds to 6.2 and 6.3 assists to 4.5.
His time on court dropped from 31.3 minutes per game to 24.6 this season.
The high-profile investigation into an alleged relationship with an underage girl also threw his season into a spin. Police closed the investigation in January and no charges were laid against Giddey.
But now the mid-season trade deadline has long passed, it appears Giddey is playing with renewed freedom and improved his shooting.
Shooting has long been the question mark over the Aussie’s head as he has proven to be an elite passer but has struggled to set the world on fire with his shooting.
Earlier this month, Phoenix’s Jusuf Nurkic stunned commentators when he chose not to defend Giddey particularly from behind the arc.
While Giddey’s shooting from three-point range is up to 0.335 per cent this year, it’s only good enough for 139th in the NBA.
But it seems like Giddey has turned a corner, hitting a career-high five three pointers from eight attempts against the Pelicans in a season-high 25 point haul. He also had nine rebounds and four assists.
ESPN’s Olgun Uluc pointed out on X that Giddey has had an excellent March, having scored double figures in 11 of his past 12 matches.
“The early-season rhetoric + inflated expectations – both not completely unwarranted, to be fair – have slightly masked the fact that Giddey has really found his stride over the back half of the season, heading into the playoffs,” Uluc said.
“He’s slowly figured out how to be a high-level, effective producer on one of the best teams in the NBA; scored in double digits in 11 of his last 12 games.”
OKC beat writer for Forbes added: “Josh Giddey is shooting better than 50 per cent from beyond the arc in the month of March on over 40 attempts.”
That may not be completely true as he has 21 three-pointers from 49 attempts, but that’s still a marked improvement at 42.9 per cent in March.
If he maintained that for the entire season, his percentage would be ranked eighth in the NBA.
Post-match, Giddey was swamped by his teammates during a live TV interview.
Asked about how he had hit his stride, Giddey said: “Staying confident, the guys trust me, the coaches trust me, so just shooting the ball with confidence and it’s going in.”
Speaking in his press conference later on, Giddey said he was riding a wave of confidence.
“Any time a player starts to see the ball go in the rim, you start to get confident and the rim starts to become bigger and the shots start to feel easier,” Giddey said.
“Shots don’t always fall, they don’t always miss, so it’s just about taking the right ones.”
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