How OKC Thunder rookie Darius Bazley fared in his toughest stretch to date

In the third review of OKC Thunder rookie Darius Bazley T.I. looks back at the toughest stretch of his young career.

OKC Thunder rookie Darius Bazley just completed a horrific stretch of the schedule and came out of it relatively unscathed. Why was it so tough? Three out of four games were on the road. Every game the OKC Thunder played was against teams who are expected to contend in their respective conference and he experienced his first blowout loss.

Let’s start with that blowout against the Indiana Pacers. Not many players can hold their heads up over this loss, Bazley however, played well enough but was unable to offer much impact in the game. He had eight points on 3-of-6 shooting and six rebounds. One thing he did well was to grab two offensive rebounds against the well-drilled Pacers.

Then came the game at home against the Philadelphia 76ers. I personally wondered if Bazley’s confidence took a hit due to the big loss in the previous game. Take a look at the following clip and you will see that Darius Bazley is a very confident young man.

He takes the ball straight down the lane at one of the best shot blockers in the game. The result, an impressive two-handed momentum swinging slam. As the season goes on we should see more of this sort of play.

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The OKC Thunder then went to the Staples Center for two games of a back to back. He missed all of his shots against the LA Clippers but then scored one beautiful basket in transition against the Los Angeles Lakers. Bazley was still active on the glass and solid in transition defense in those games.

Bazley is making solid plays that don’t come up on the box score. His hack foul to stop Dwight Howard dunking the ball, putting a notoriously poor free-throw shooter to the line was a tremendous heads up play. This is starting to add to his reputation as a good interior defender.

However, I noticed the tendency for the young rookie to camp out in half court offense. It was particularly noticeable in the Lakers game. In transition, Bazley would set off to provide an option. In the half court, he was usually in the left hand corner or at the 45 degree section of the perimeter.

Bazley would barely move on the offensive possession, even when another player cut to the wing he remained standing planted in his location. As a result, Bazley only took one shot, and it was in transition.

The next area of development for the 19-year old rookie is working on his off-ball movement on offense. The simple act of cutting without the ball can open up lanes for passes and drives for easy buckets for his teammates.

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