Five takeaways from the Thunder’s nail-biting win against Melbourne United
By Tony Heim
Isolation basketball can’t be OKC’s main offensive strategy
Tonight was a step in the wrong direction for the Oklahoma City offense. After focusing heavily on spreading the ball in their first game playing together, the OK3 reverted to a heavy-isolation game. There’s a likely reason for this – they were playing against inferior talent.
Every Thunder star had a heavy mismatch against them. Russ, George and Melo knew they could score on their opponent at any given moment, which led to more than a few forced shots. Instead of using each other’s talents to open up the floor they pushed each other off to the side. That will work some nights, but it’s not going to beat the Warriors in June.
Golden State isn’t great solely because of their talent; they’re great because they play off each other’s skillsets so well. The goal of this training camp is to lay the foundation for a Warriors-like chemistry come postseason. When Russ isn’t running pick & pop with Carmelo, when PG isn’t running pick & roll with Adams as Carmelo comes off a screen, that foundation can’t be laid.
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Billy Donovan has more weapons than almost any other head coach in the league. We talked about how he can use Andre Roberson effectively in the last slide. More important to the OKC Thunder success is how he uses his stars. Instead of designing individualized plays like we’ve seen so far, Oklahoma City needs to draw up more plays that create multiple offensive options.
This isn’t last season – Donovan has the weapons to make that concept a reality.