Film Room: OKC Thunder offense still a work in progress
By Gideon Lim
It is way too early into the season for anyone to be pressing panic buttons. But, tonight’s loss against the Minnesota Timberwolves showed the OKC Thunder still have a long way to becoming truly proficient on offense.
Last week, the OKC Thunder played their division rivals in a home game, and fell cruelly to a buzzer-beater. However, tonight’s loss felt palpably different.
Tonight, the Thunder’s half-court offense was by far the biggest headache. Despite starting the fourth quarter off shooting well, the offense slowly trickled out. If anything, tonight’s loss showed that the offense remains a work in progress.
Mixing up the pin down:
Every night, the OKC Thunder run at least 4-5 plays where Paul George comes off a pin down to attack the middle. Here, the Thunder set up to do the same, and the defense responds by cheating off Steven Adams. Adams picks up on this smartly and slips the screen. It is an easy read for Russell Westbrook, and Adams can rise up for the alley-oop even before looking at the ball.
As Shaquille O’Neal explains, the key to a great move is to have a counter-move, just to keep the defense honest. Kudos to Billy Donovan for incorporating this wrinkle into his playbook, if only to make Paul George’s life easier.
Clunky half-court offense:
Billy Donovan occasionally runs this play, where he overloads the strong side with all his stars. The logic is having Paul George coming off a Carmelo Anthony pin down is close to unguardable.
This clip is an example of when the logic fails. Essentially, the spacing collapses if Paul George’s defender manages to hedge on his screen, or when Russell Westbrook probes towards the strong side. In this case, both happen and Westbrook has to find an alternate route for a difficult layup.
Things are even harder for him because Jerami Grant’s defender can cheat off him on the weak side. Overloading is not wrong. But, when there are no counter moves, as explained above, the play gets exposed quickly.
Awkward final possession:
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with this play. With under ten seconds left, Carmelo Anthony’ faked the hand-off and got an off-balance pull-up over his defender. Not fantastic, but given his credentials in clutch time, this is not a bad play.
But, contrast this play with Anthony’s near-game winner against the Wolves last week. Out of the timeout, there was a clear plan to execute, and Anthony found an open look for three. Without Donovan’s coaching, Westbrook seemed to lack a plan with his new squad. If the Thunder want to be elite, they will need to develop basic plays for situations like these.
Fighting myopia:
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The thing about the OKC Thunder’s current position is that in theory, there is nothing wrong with the offense being a work in progress. Ball dominant superstars should not be expected to gel immediately.
The problem comes when impatience sets in. If the OKC Thunder’s win column looked better, maybe Billy Donovan and the rest of the team would feel more comfortable taking their time to tinker with the offense. After all, with so much firepower, the rational thing to do is to find a way to mesh talent together.
But, when the chips are down, and external factors like Paul George’s looming free agency starts to weigh on people’s mind, the tendency to settle for win-now mode increases. Knowing Russell Westbrook, the team offense could very well just default to simple drive-and-kick plays. These plays may look effective there and then, but the truth is the team offense can and should strive for far more.
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Tonight’s loss was yet another sobering reminder that acquiring stars are just the first step of building a contender. The OKC Thunder remain in prime position to contend next May. But, tonight’s half-court offense will likely be on Billy Donovan’s mind for the weeks to come.