Scheduled
Washington Wizards at Atlanta Hawks
2026-27 · Regular season · Emirates NBA Cup
Thunder are last in assist rate at 53.9% while sitting 6-2, and the Hawks lead at 72.5%: the NBA’s widest passing gap in years
Oklahoma City assists on 53.9% of its makes, below any full-season team mark of the last five years, while going 6-2. Atlanta leads at 72.5%, an 18.6-point gap from first to last.
In this article
The Oklahoma City Thunder are 6-2 and last in the NBA in assist rate. Through eight games, only 53.9 percent of their field goals have come with an assist, 11.1 points below the league average of 65.0 percent. No team finished a full season that low in any of the last five years.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is scoring 30.1 points a game on 10.6 made field goals, with 4.5 assists. The offense still finds the open man at times:
Video: OKC Thunder on X. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finds Aday Mara for the Power Play of the Game.
The numbers that stand out
- Oklahoma City’s 53.9 percent assist rate is last in the league. Atlanta is first at 72.5 percent. The gap between them is 18.6 percentage points
- The Thunder average 21.6 assists a game, also last. The Hawks average 31.0, first, a spread of 9.4 assists a night
- Only three teams are below 60 percent: Oklahoma City at 53.9, New Orleans at 58.8 and the Lakers at 59.6. Only two are at 70 or above: Atlanta at 72.5 and Orlando at 70.1
- In games without Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City’s assist rate falls to 52.0 percent over five games (3-2). With him, it is 57.0 percent over three games (3-0)
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander accounts for 26.5 percent of Oklahoma City’s made field goals and 27.4 percent of its points. The Thunder finish 46.1 percent of their makes without an assist, 18.5 unassisted field goals a game
- Across the last five full seasons, the lowest team assist rate was Houston’s 54.8 percent in 2024-25. Oklahoma City is already a point below that floor while sitting at .750
Last to first, side by side
| Team | Record | Assists per game | Assist rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thunder | 6-2 | 21.6 | 53.9% |
| Pelicans | 4-4 | 25.4 | 58.8% |
| Lakers | 7-2 | 24.8 | 59.6% |
| Timberwolves | 6-3 | 26.8 | 60.6% |
| Hornets | 3-6 | 21.1 | 60.7% |
| Hawks | 5-4 | 31.0 | 72.5% |
| Magic | 2-6 | 26.1 | 70.1% |
| Heat | 3-6 | 29.2 | 69.8% |
| Warriors | 6-3 | 27.8 | 69.4% |
| Knicks | 4-4 | 26.0 | 68.4% |
The five lowest and five highest assist rates in the NBA through Thursday’s games. Assist rate is assists divided by made field goals.
How low 53.9 percent really is
Assist rate has climbed in the half-court era of threes and drive-and-kick. League average over a full season sat between 58 and 61 percent for most of the 2010s, then jumped to 63.2 in 2023-24 and 63.7 in each of the last two seasons. Early this year it is 65.0.
| Season | Lowest team | Record | Assist rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | TOR Raptors | 48-34 | 54.4% |
| 2022-23 | NY Knicks | 47-35 | 54.5% |
| 2023-24 | Trail Blazers | 21-61 | 58.6% |
| 2024-25 | HOU Rockets | 52-30 | 54.8% |
| 2025-26 | BOS Celtics | 56-26 | 58.4% |
Full-season team lows from Basketball-Reference, 2021-22 through 2025-26. No team finished below 54.4 percent in that span.
Ten full-season teams since 2014-15 finished at 53.9 percent or lower and still won at least half their games. The most recent was Portland in the shortened 2020-21 season at 51.6 percent. No team has done it in a full 82-game season since the 2017-18 Trail Blazers and Thunder, both in the low 53s. Oklahoma City’s own recent history sits in that group: 52.8 percent with a 45-37 record in 2014-15, then 53.2 and 53.4 in 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Atlanta is the other extreme
The Hawks are assisting on 72.5 percent of their makes, which would clear every full-season high of the last five years. Golden State’s 71.3 percent last season and San Antonio’s 71.4 percent in 2023-24 were the recent peaks. Atlanta is at 31.0 assists a game with Jalen Johnson at 7.9 assists in seven games, Dyson Daniels at 4.7 and Kingston Flemings at 4.6.
The 18.6-point gap from first to last is wider than every full-season gap of the last five years except 2016-17, when Toronto’s 47.2 percent and Golden State’s 70.5 percent were 23.3 points apart. Last season’s full-season spread was 12.2 points.
Winning while finishing alone
A low assist rate is not an automatic warning. Those older Thunder and Trail Blazers teams won with isolation scoring, and this Oklahoma City group is 6-2 with a plus-1.3 point differential. The offense ranks near the middle of the league at 108.0 points per 100 possessions, and the defense is 106.8.
What is new is the combination of a sub-54 percent rate and a winning record in an era when almost nobody finishes a season that low. Five of Oklahoma City’s eight games have come without Holmgren. In those five, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is at 31.6 points and 4.8 assists a game, and the team assist rate is 52.0 percent. The three games with Holmgren are a cleaner 57.0 percent.
What’s next
Oklahoma City plays at Memphis on Friday night, a 6-2 matchup. Atlanta hosts Washington in an NBA Cup group game. Eight and nine games are still a small sample, but the extremes are already past every full-season floor and ceiling of the last half-decade.
Game results and team totals: ESPN box scores through Thursday, Nov. 5. Historical team seasons: Basketball-Reference.
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