Thunder blowing huge lead to Celtics is a long-term positive

Two entirely different halves of basketball against the Boston Celtics showed the OKC Thunder their biggest strengths and weaknesses.

The original title of this article was “Five reasons why the Thunder are better than expected.” That was the product of the first 24 minutes against the Celtics. They dominated both ends of the floor through quintessential team basketball. The defensive rotations stifled a pick-heavy Celtics offense. Quick ball movement (OKC assisted on 12 of their first 18 made field goals) resulted in easy opportunities for both Thunder stars and role players. And then everything flipped.

Brad Stevens’ half-time adjustments, per usual, were fantastic. The Celtics went small when Steven Adams was on the floor and big when he went off it. Their defense employed a switch-everything scheme, forcing OKC to run something other than the Russell Westbrook/Adams pick & roll. Oklahoma City couldn’t respond quick enough, resulting in a blown 18-point lead.

That’s the best thing that could have happened to the Thunder.

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Prior to the second half, Oklahoma City had played five beautiful halves of basketball. They outscored teams 266-197 in that time and made it look easy in the process. It was the Thunder team we expected to see by the last quarter of the season, not before the first ten games had concluded. They were so impressive that we started seeing tweets like this:

Did Yaya back down when the Thunder collapsed? No, because he understands the complexities of analyzing early-season returns.

Why blowing the lead is long-term positive

Trust me, I would much rather be writing my initial article. If the Thunder would have continued their strong play the aura around this team would be different. They’d be the NBA’s hottest team even though they’re integrating four new rotation players. The short-term gains, however, don’t nearly match what Oklahoma City can learn from this performance in the long-run.

When they break down the film they will see an offense that shot 47.6% on 13 assists in the first half. They’ll see a team that worked to find open shots for each other – five different Thunder players made threes. And when they switch to the second half they’ll see an entirely different squad.

They’ll see Carmelo taking seven more attempts even though he couldn’t buy a bucket (1-12 in the second half). They’ll watch a defense that stopped communicating effectively, hence why Al Horford was wide open the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. Most importantly, they’ll see a team that completely went away from the very style of play that dominated the prior 2.5 games.

Going into the season we knew the Thunder were going to have trouble integrating three #1 options into the offense, especially in clutch situations. So far that’s played out – OKC is now 0-3 in games decided in crunch-time. After losing three games in similar fashion, Friday night’s collapse should be the wake up call for this team. Especially when they have the first half of film to go over.

There’s never an excuse for losing an 18-point lead at home (hey Jeremy). The Thunder should not have lost the game, but they did. So they’re going to learn from it – hopefully – and take the proper steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

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It’s too early in the season for this team to already be the second-best team in the league. They have the talent, but they don’t have the chemistry. They aren’t going to learn that chemistry by squeaking out wins because of their overall skill. They’re going to learn by losing heartbreaking games like this.

The Thunder were never going to have a seamless transition; bumps in the road like these were inevitable. It’s best that this happened at game #8 and not game #30 though. Teams don’t improve when they continually dominate the competition, they get better when they fall apart and learn what doesn’t work.

What happened Friday night was terrible. Oklahoma City should be 5-3 and riding a three-game win streak. Instead they have a blown 18-point lead on their minds. That’s not going to sit well with this team knowing everything they are playing for this season.

That’s why the Oklahoma City Thunder left Chesapeake Energy Arena a better team.