Oklahoma City stinks in crunch time. How worried should Thunder fans be?

No team this summer added more talent on paper to its roster than the Oklahoma City Thunder. A team carried by Russell Westbrook alone last season secured Paul George and Carmelo Anthony, creating one of the most prized three-man offensive attacks in the league.

But the Thunder haven’t performed like a team that boasts the reigning MVP and two perennial All-Stars. While Oklahoma City has morphed into one of the NBA’s top defenses, they are struggling to put it all together in crunch time.

The Thunder are 4-7 through their first 11 games and have devolved from one of the league’s best crunch-time teams to an awful one, only averaging seven points per game in clutch moments -- defined as a five-point game within the final five minutes of regulation and overtime. As a result, they are winless in the six games that have been decided down the stretch.

OKC’s problems won’t last. It’s early and they have talent. Wherever there is talent, for the most part, there is success over time. But let’s dig into a few reasons why the Thunder are struggling in the clutch.

Oklahoma City boasts the league’s second-best defense overall this season, holding opponents to just 97.6 points per 100 possessions. Often times, they turn that defense into offense.

But in crunch time, that defense gets reduced to shambles. As a matter of fact, no team is quite as bad as Oklahoma City.

The Thunder allow a mind-blowing 162 points per 100 possessions in the clutch with no improvement to their offensive output down the stretch. For reference, most teams hover between 92 and 117 points per 100 possessions in the clutch. The Knicks — surprisingly the best crunch-time defense in the league — have a defensive rating of 76.9 in these situation. The Cavaliers, coming in at second-worst, allow 126 points per 100 clutch possessions.

The Thunder are at 162. One hundred and sixty-two!

It’s rare that a newly formed group of stars clicks right away. It took time for Kevin Durant to mesh with the Warriors last season, just like it took time for LeBron James to work with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, then Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in Cleveland.

The Thunder are no different. George had been the end-all, be-all for years in Indiana until his time in the East ended. Up until Kristaps Porzingis’s emergence in New York, Carmelo Anthony was the Knicks. Russell Westbrook is coming off of the most bonkers individual season in NBA history, one in which he was used to taking every big shot.

Each member of OKC’s Big 3 are used to doing things on their own, especially down the stretch. Now, something has to change.

For starters, Westbrook has to get used to having reliable shooters at his side:

Here, Russ is on one of his signature coast-to-coast drives but fails to see a wide open Anthony on the wing. (He could have hit George, too, but Gary Harris was trailing the play.)

It’s easy to forgive Westbrook in transition. That’s his bread and butter. Plays where he misses open shooters in halfcourt sets are harder to stomach.

Like here, where Melo — a reliable catch-and-shooter — is open and expecting a pass at the top of the key:

And here, again, where Melo is even more wide open on the wing, but Westbrook unsuccessfully attacks to defenders in the paint:

If anything happens uniformly across all games in crunch time, it’s that player awareness and intensity skyrockets. Nobody wants to lose a close game, and because of that, they’ll compete harder, especially on the defensive end and for loose balls.

For that reason, teams with bad habits see those habits come to the forefront when it matters most. A team that can’t grab rebounds is going to get crushed on the offensive glass late in the fourth. Teams that can’t hit free throws will miss them when it matters. And a team like Oklahoma City that relies too heavily on isolation and pick-and-roll offense will continue to rely on it, even to a fault.

Isolations account for 12.2 percent of Thunder possessions; that’s more than any other team in the NBA not named the Houston Rockets. But Oklahoma City only scores 0.87 points per iso possession.

That’s not enough of a conversion rate to keep going back to it in the fourth quarter, no matter how talented the players are. And just like Westbrook missed his open teammates earlier in the game, he missed them in the fourth quarter, too:

Even when the Thunder aren’t running a traditional isolation, their pick-and-roll game can be just as stagnant. OKC’s pick-and-roll ball-handler and screener account for nearly a quarter of its offense. With Westbrook in charge, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

... until the game is on the line and everyone is playing their best defense. That’s when the Thunder offense becomes a one-man show, much like it was when Durant was still in town.

In OKC’s 0-6 start in games that go to clutch time, Russell Westbrook is shooting 55 percent. That means more times than not, he’s good for a basket.

The same can’t be said for Carmelo Anthony and Paul George, the two players who were brought to the Thunder in part to alleviate some of the burden on Westbrook down the stretch.

Melo is shooting an awful 28.4 percent in crunch time, and if it couldn’t get any worse, George is shooting 25 percent and only 16.7 percent on threes.

While PG-13 might not be the best shooter for buzzer-beaters, he made 47.6 percent of his shots in crunch time with Indiana last season, including a third of his three-point attempts. Anthony, too, shot a better percentage from the field and downtown in crunch time last season. This could merely be an early trend that dies as the season goes on.

It’s way too early to jump to conclusions about Oklahoma City. They’re still one of the NBA’s most talented teams and will be in the thick of the playoff hunt when April, May, and June roll around.

But the Thunder don’t look like a cohesive unit, rather, a trio of hoopers trying to figure it out on the fly. Part of the blame is on the shortened training camp and preseason that moved the NBA season start date up to Oct. 17. But some of it is coaching, and another part is the Thunder defense late in games.

Anthony said he and George want to fit in with Russ as best they can, and standing wide open on the perimeter while Westbrook makes the defense contract is the best way they can do that. Now, it’s up to Westbrook to trust his teammates and hit the open man after splicing the defense.

“We came here for [Russell Westbrook]. We came here because we believe in what you can do and what you can bring to the game. We don’t want you to stop doing that,” he said via The Norman Transcript’s Fred Katz. “We want you to be that player, we want you to be that person, and we’ll fit in. We’ll do a great job of fitting in around him, and I think he’s taken that advice.”

But that process does take time, especially for two players used to controlling the ball.

Ideally, and most likely, these things will shape up when January rolls around. But if Oklahoma City is still struggling as months go by, there may be some bigger questions that need answers before the trade deadline.