Thunderous Intentions
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OKC Thunder Won’t Win With Scott Brooks

By Jeremy Lambert

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The Oklahoma City Thunder won’t win a NBA Championship with Scott Brooks as the head coach.

They’ll win a lot of games during the regular season and they might even win a playoff series or two. But they’ll never win the 16 playoff games necessary to raise the Larry O’Brien championship trophy as long as Brooks is the man running the show on the floor.

It can often be extremely frustrating to see the Thunder fall short year after year. They have Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, easily two of the five best players in the league. They have Serge Ibaka, a well-rounded power forward. They have Reggie Jackson, a starting point guard on many teams and a candidate for the Sixth Man of the Year award. They have young talent and depth with players like Steven Adams, Jeremy Lamb, Anthony Morrow, Andre Roberson, and others. Sure, they play in an ultra-competitive Western Conference, but with the talent that Sam Presti has assembled, why aren’t they better?

Yes, injuries have a played a part in the Thunder not capturing that elusive championship, but poor coaching has played a bigger part.

Brooks’ ISO-heavy offense and over-reliance on Durant and Westbrook make the Thunder predictable, especially down the stretch in close games. While the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs move the ball to create open shots, Durant and Westbrook constantly go 1-on-1. They’re so good that they’re able to create their own shots or create an opportunity for a teammate, but it’s nothing like you see with the Warriors or Spurs, who make three or four passes before taking a quality shot.

The Thunder are just as talented as the Warriors and Spurs, but the ball doesn’t move the same way. These teams average 24+ assists per game while the Thunder average only 19. They are second-to-last in the NBA when it comes to assists per game with only the Orlando Magic – hardly a title contender – moving the ball less.

Championship teams move the ball. The Thunder don’t do that enough to win a championship. Part of that responsibility falls on Durant and Westbrook as the stars and leaders of the team, but most of that falls on Brooks as the coach. It’s up to him to create plays and say to KD and Russ, “We need less 1-on-1 play and more player and ball movement.”

Perhaps more frustrating than Brooks’ lack of an offensive system is his poor in-game management.

For some reason, Kendrick Perkins played more minutes than Adams in a December 18 loss to Golden State. Why? Only Scott Brooks knows. Perkins is about the most useless center in the league given how much he makes and how often he plays, but for some reason Brooks played him 16 minutes against a Golden State team that, without Andrew Bogut and David Lee, has no real post-up threat. Perkins entered the game on Thursday with OKC up 25-11. When he left, the Thunder lead was cut to six.

We’ve seen this for years with Brooks. He’d rather play Derek Fisher and Caron Butler than Reggie Jackson and Jeremy Lamb. Brooks’ reasoning was that he trusts the veteran guys more than the younger players. You know how young players get better and gain enough experience to become veterans? They get minutes in big situations. It would be one thing if the veterans contributed, but Fisher and Butler didn’t play well last season and Perkins isn’t playing well this season. I don’t care about experience; I want the best players on the court no matter what the situation is.

Brooks has always struggled when it comes to handling his rotations and lineups. In the playoffs last season after Nick Collison and Steven Adams helped the Thunder win Game 6 to eliminate the Los Angeles Clippers, they never saw the court together in Game 1 against the San Antonio Spurs. Brooks consistently refused to go to a small ball lineup against the Miami Heat, allowing Miami to expose Collison and Perkins during the 2012 NBA Finals.

This season he’s once again stunting the growth of Lamb and Perry Jones by giving them inconsistent minutes. PJ3 played great early in the season when Westbrook, Durant, and Jackson were all injured before he got hurt himself. With everyone healthy, Jones now finds himself sometimes paying 20 minutes a game and other times not playing at all. The same goes for Lamb, who didn’t find himself playing at all against Phoenix on December 14 then playing 15 and 14 minutes in the next two games before going down to eight in the most recent game against the Lakers.

Both players have proven that they are good enough to contribute when called upon, but when you’re getting inconsistent minutes, your confidence starts to waver.

Finally, Brooks has a tendency to run Durant into the ground throughout the regular season and especially into the playoffs. There aren’t too many positives from last season’s MVP playing in only nine games this season, but the biggest positive is that he’s getting some rest and being put on a minute restriction. Durant is always in the top five when it comes to minutes player during the regular season and then he averages about five more minutes per game in the playoffs. Eventually, all those minutes catch up and we’ve seen KD fade in the final minutes of big playoff games.

Scott Brooks just doesn’t seem to have a big picture plan; he plays checkers while guys like Greg Popovich, Rick Carlisle, and Steve Kerr are playing chess. He’s got to figure out how to play the right game, in order to finally win the ones that count the most in the playoffs.

If Brooks ever learns learns how to strategize like these elite members of the coaching fraternity, he might be able to take one of the most talented teams in the NBA to the championship they deserve.

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