It’s early enough in the NBA season that any takeaway is an overreaction — so let’s overreact.

It’s time to roll out 10 grand proclamations about what we’ve seen so far.

Part II of this story will publish Friday. Here is Part I.

The Oklahoma City Thunder own the NBA’s best defense

This is no regular defense. It is a fortress. It is a calculated swarm of guardians, a group dedicated to keeping dribblers away from the paint — and it’s not even all the way healthy.

The Thunder are allowing only 93.8 points per 100 possessions during their 7-0 start, more than eight more per 100 better than the second-place Golden State Warriors.

No team has churned out a double-digit defensive rating in a single season since the 67-win San Antonio Spurs nine years ago. The streak won’t halt this season. Scoring is too prevalent around the league, and a dig into the numbers shows Oklahoma City has benefited from randomness. And yet, this squad’s versatility makes it difficult to imagine any other topping it.

Need to play big? The Thunder can do it with their starting five — and they can grow even more once 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein returns from injury. With Hartenstein out, coach Mark Daigneault has gone small, too, which is no problem given their punchers on the perimeter.

The Thunder have six defenders on the wing who are better than merely good: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace, Aaron Wiggins and Alex Caruso. They employ zero pushovers.

Getting to the basket is a chore. They allow just 56 percent shooting at the rim, best in the NBA, and that’s not only because the skyscraping Chet Holmgren is even better defensively in his second pro season. If a dribbler is fortunate enough to arrive in the paint, he often doesn’t have his balance.

The Thunder are insects. They keep the basketball away from their opponents’ best playmakers and create the most turnovers in the league, by no coincidence.

Look at how they force the rock out of James Harden’s hands with a seamless switch from Dort and Wiggins, then prey on Derrick Jones Jr., a less comfortable ballhandler, once he has to make a play:

The numbers won’t remain so extreme. Opponents will shoot better from deep. They’ve made only 27 percent of their 3-pointers from above the break against OKC, the lowest percentage in the league, and 30 percent of their wide-open 3s, second-lowest in the league, according to Second Spectrum. A rise in those percentages will make a difference. Oklahoma City gives up loads of deep balls, not because it doesn’t value the 3-pointer but because it doesn’t let anyone get to the hoop. Defenses have to give up shots from somewhere.

And yet, not all open 3s are created equal, even if they are all, by definition, open.

The hallmark of the Thunder defense so far isn’t anything Oklahoma City does; it’s the way its offenses look. Fighting through a 24-second possession in OKC is exhausting. Releasing a hasty jumper at the end of a chaotic possession is not the same as putting up a smooth one that didn’t take much resistance to create.

The Thunder will grind you to dust.

Their opponents are just 7 of 49 on shots taken with four or fewer seconds to go on the shot clock. Give them the matchup they want, let them get set and let them push you deep into a possession, and you’re in trouble.

If Bilal Coulibaly can go to the basket, send him there

Let Coulibaly approach with no regard. After all, this type of aggression was not expected.

It wasn’t expected when Coulibaly entered the NBA a season ago, beginning his pro career not thought to have scoring chops. He improved as Year 1 progressed, but what he’s done through the Washington Wizards’ first six games is new.

After a summer of adding strength and developing a better understanding of driving angles, Coulibaly is attacking the rim like never before — and it’s working.

He’s flying the other way in transition. He’s turning the corner around bigger defenders, a feat he rarely pulled off last season. Defenders could push around the rookie version of Coulibaly. Look at this play from the beginning of 2023-24, when he is the last player on the court who understands where he is spinning:

Now watch this recent play and look at how he bounces off Jaylen Brown, a strong on-ball defender, as if Brown is not even there.

The Wizards are getting Coulibaly the ball on the move more than they did before. He’s curling around screens at the elbow and throttling to the hoop from there. The design is for the 2023 No. 7 pick to build momentum toward the paint. He’s absorbing contact, finishing through defenders in a way he didn’t as a rookie.

He’s averaging 2.3 free throws off 8.7 drives a game. Last season, he averaged just 0.5 free throws off 3.7 drives. The scoring has soared from 8.4 points a night to 17.7.

The Wizards want to sink all the way to the bottom (or the top, depending on your perspective) of the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, but they want to develop the young guys while they do it. Handing more responsibilities to Coulibaly is part of the mission. So far, the returns are encouraging.

The Bucks are in trouble

We’ve all heard the conjecture, the comments about how teams will circle Milwaukee for Giannis Antetokounmpo if this downtrodden performance continues, the retroactive questions about the Damian Lillard trade or the Doc Rivers hiring. But so much of what’s hurting the 1-6 Bucks doesn’t have to do with the flashy names or even the injury to Khris Middleton, without whom they could not make a playoff run.

The same seemingly preventable no-nos that plagued the Bucks all of last season are popping up again.

They aren’t physical, don’t make the extra-effort plays and fail to get back on defense, as The Athletic’s Eric Nehm detailed recently. Milwaukee is giving up 1.44 points per transition play, second-worst in the NBA, according to Cleaning the Class. Too often, the Bucks just space out.

Let’s use one play, the viral Ja Morant butt-lob, as an example.

The pass is extraordinary, as is the hustle, but it’s not like Morant needed to crack open the defense. A lane had already spread. Viewers jumping out of their chairs in excitement expended more physical energy than he did. This highlight was too easy.

Look at the passing lane, so unimpeded that a guy can toss up an alley-oop from his backside. Players worry about their release points dropping too low on jump shots. Just imagine how blockable those jumpers would be if they were one foot off the ground. That’s what Morant does here. And yet, forget about the possibility of a defender trying to wrestle the basketball away from him; there isn’t a hand in sight.

Look at the cutting lane, so open that Santi Aldama can frolic to the hoop unperturbed for an untouched lob.

The Bucks have problems, and they’re not just related to talent.

GO DEEPER

Bucks ‘upbeat’ despite losing streak hitting six games: ‘We will make the playoffs’

RJ Barrett can pass

Early-season proclamations about Barrett have become a theme over his first six NBA seasons. He’s streaky. They don’t always last.

But he sneakily made a leap after the Toronto Raptors acquired him last season, a large enough one that, had he played the 65 games to qualify, he could have been in the running for Most Improved Player. Toronto turned him into more of a cutter and transition fiend. But now, with injuries squashing their roster, the Raptors have gone to Barrett to facilitate.

He’s doing it like never before.

Yes, Barrett has played only five games this season, but he had never played five games like this.

He already has 39 assists, 7.8 per game. Until this stretch, he had never even come close to totaling that many assists over any five-game stretch. He had never in his career reached double-digit assists in a game until November — yes, the month that began less than a week ago. Now, he’s gotten there in two of his past three matches.

Barrett has never run this much pick-and-roll, a trend with both Immanuel Quickley and Scottie Barnes hurt. Yet, the uptick in passing isn’t just occurring because he’s handling the ball more. He’s reading defenses, noticing where they rotate, then hitting teammates. He and Gradey Dick have made music together more than once already.

Barrett doesn’t even need to look at his sharpshooting teammate to hit him in the corner on the play below, noticing as soon as he moseyed around a screen that Dick’s defender, Malik Monk, had sagged into the lane. He spun and flung the assist crosscourt as if it were instinct.

It’s been a steady incline for Barrett on these sorts of plays.

He never made passes like this until the beginning of last season, when he was still with the New York Knicks. Then, every once in a while, they popped up, though not consistently enough.

But through a couple of weeks, Barrett appears like an improved passer. The wonder will be how the trend continues once the Raptors, who await the returns of Quickley and Barnes, get healthier and the ball doesn’t settle in Barrett’s hands as often.

Jay Huff!

Maybe this is an under-reaction. Huff probably deserves his name in all caps.

The Memphis Grizzlies were supposed to have a center problem, entering the season with a rookie as one of its conventional bigs and a longtime G Leaguer as the other. Alas, no one told Huff.

A guy two years removed from a G League Defensive Player of the Year honor can’t miss a shot. If he touches it from beyond the 3-point arc, it flies. Huff is 15-of-28 from deep and went for 20 points in 14 minutes on Saturday. Zach Edey, the mammoth who has started ahead of Huff, is scoring in droves, too, massacring smaller defenders with an unblockable hook shot and even hurting opponents far from the paint. On Monday, he swatted a layup against the Brooklyn Nets, then jogged back the other way into a transition 3-pointer.

Combined, Huff and Edey are averaging 21 points in 35.1 minutes sharing the center spot.

Either Huff has merged Stephen Curry’s and Ray Allen’s best qualities together, or he’s just off to a hot start. Either way, the Grizzlies look like they have a reliable center combination with a rookie and longtime G Leaguer leading the way.

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(Top photo: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)