Thunderous Thoughts: Who’s to blame for the offensive regression
Welcome to Thunderous Thoughts. Your weekly look at the OKC Thunder where I just stand around and do nothing.
Ten games into the season and the Oklahoma City Thunder aren’t where us fans hoped they would be. 4-6 with zero wins against the Western Conference. That’s unacceptable. But, you know, it’s early.
Two weeks ago, I said that the sky wasn’t falling. That’s still the case. The sky doesn’t fall in two weeks. Science says I’m right. But things are definitely a bit cloudy right now.
I’ve had to hand out player grades in each of the last two losses. My thoughts on where I think the team stands is pretty clear. Guys are doing their own thing and nothing all at once. Until the team learns how to play together, which may never happen at this rate, this is going to be a great 2K team and nothing else.
I can handle losses, but I can’t handle the way they’re losing. Things just feel too familiar. Blowing leads, failing to execute in the clutch, going away from what is working, failing to get stops, ISO ball, taking bad shots, and your turn-my turn offense. It’s the same issues we’ve seen for years in Oklahoma City. The players change. The coach changes. But what we see remains the same.
It starts with Billy Donovan. Either his system isn’t working or he can’t get the players to buy-in to what he’s selling. Either way, that’s a failure on his part. Donovan’s offense at Florida was all about pace-and-space. The ball moved around the court, his bigs were the best passers on the team, and they got any shot they wanted on the floor. There’s evidence, at least at the college level, that Donovan can create a ball moving offense.
But there’s been little evidence of that at the NBA level.
I’m not asking for the ball to move at a Golden State rate, but Oklahoma City fails to do simple things that every other team, including bad teams, are able to do. Other teams use their best players as cutters off the ball. Westbrook is stationary when he gives up the ball. Other teams use dribble handoffs to create shots and mismatches. Rarely do we see that from the Thunder. The ball stops far too often in OKC.
Russell Westbrook deserves his share of the blame. His assist numbers are great, but he gets those assists through gravitational force. Guys are drawn to him, he finds the open guy, and they hopefully hit their shot. He also forces a lot of passes, which is why his turnover rate is so high. He doesn’t pass within a system and oftentimes doesn’t look like he plays within a system. Unless the system is, “stand around and watch or wait for the ball to come back to you.”
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Carmelo Anthony has been the ball stopper we all feared he would be when he was acquired. Half of his possessions are “jab step, jab step, jab step, long two” while the four other guys stand around and do nothing. Paul George looks like Kevin Durant-lite with ISO dribbling and pull-up jumpers.
No one is creating shots for others. They’re creating shots for themselves and maybe they’ll pass it to someone else if they’re unhappy with the shot they attempt to create. Or maybe they’ll just take the shot anyway.
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It’s like Donovan is trying to run the 2015-16 offense, which was second in the league mind you, except he’s using George instead of Durant and throwing in Melo ISOs to accommodate him. That worked then because Durant is better than George and those Melo ISOs were more Westbrook-Adams pick-and-rolls, Westbrook-Ibaka pick-and-pops, and a smattering of Enes Kanter post-ISOs.
Top to bottom, this team is more talented than that team. This team has the personnel to be the third best offense in the league behind Houston and Golden State. But something isn’t working.
Guys this good on a team this deep should not have to work as hard as they do for the shots they get. We’re only ten games in, but the fact that the team has regressed from game-to-game doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence.
Other Thunder Thoughts
*Run the offense through Jerami Grant.