The Oklahoma City Thunder are one of the youngest teams in the league, with an average age of 26.4. (D. Clarke Evans/NBAE via Getty Images)
Here’s how good the Thunder are: Their offense went through the late-game yips again in their Game 5 win against the Spurs on Monday, with Russell Westbrook authoring perhaps the worst possession of the playoffs by double-dribbling as Kevin Durant stood in the corner with about 3:30 to go â€" and yet, they still ended up scoring at a points-per-possession rate that nearly would have led the NBA.
That has been the story of this team’s offense for two years now: It looks stagnant and uncreative, often at the worst times, but when you look at the numbers, there is Oklahoma City in the top five (last season) and top two (this season) in the league’s rankings of points per possession.
The occasional crunch-time micro-level collapses, born of bad shot selection and coach Scott Brooks’ love for difficult three-pointers regardless of the score, represented a serious problem that cost the Thunder dearly in the Western Conference finals against Dallas last season. It led to endless nitpicking about Westbrook’s tendency to blindly gun, Brooks’ alleged lack of coaching chops and the team’s dismal assist rate.
The nitpicking was justified in a way; it is what we do to greatness aspiring to something higher, especially when old problems continue to pop up. Westbrook still kills possessions by breaking plays early in the shot clock, leaving his teammates shaking their heads and scrambling to get out of his way as he drives into a painted area packed with players setting up for the play they thought Westbrook would execute. This happened early in the third quarter on Monday, during San Antonio’s furious rally, when the Thunder prepared to run Durant off a Thabo Sefolosha screen under the hoop, only Westbrook decided to drive past Tony Parker and into a wall of bodies for a wild miss.
Brooks spent much of the regular season leaning on the same old isolation stuff at the end of games, banking on Durant to bail out the team as James Harden stood around like a scrub with a nice beard. In fact, during the regular season, Harden took just five shots in the last three minutes of close games, while Westbrook and Durant combined to attempt 103 of the Thunder’s 120 shots in those situations, per NBA.com. That speaks to an inexcusable lack of end-game creativity.
The coach also is perhaps too loyal to Derek Fisher and a starting lineup that doesn’t work all that well, and he strangely ignored Sefolosha as a possible option in small-ball lineups â€" until this Western Conference finals series against the Spurs.
And yet, there was a forest/trees thing going on amid all the hand-wringing. The Thunder ranked among the top three offenses the entire season. They played Harden, Durant and Westbrook more together than they did in 2010-11, and the results were devastating. And very slowly, the Thunder got better at all the subtle things that make champions. Maximizing the impact of three perimeter stars is difficult, even if Oklahoma City’s standout trio doesn’t have the same overlapping skill-set issues that made the LeBron James/Dwyane Wade growth process a fitful one in Miami. But the Thunder have gradually figured it out, thanks to improvement by all three stars and the coaching staff’s small, always-ongoing tweaks to the offensive system.
Westbrook has transformed his mid-range jumper from a liability into a strength, and he has improved as a passer. His assist numbers dropped this season because he increasingly shares ball-handling duties with Durant and Harden, but he has widened the range of passes he can work. Monday night alone, he tossed four or five I’m not sure he could have made last season â€" two cross-court skip passes to Daequan Cook out of the pick-and-roll, a nearly blind pitch-back to Durant for an open three-pointer and a gorgeous drop pass to Nick Collison out of a pick-and-roll, a play on which Westbrook froze the lurking help defender (Stephen Jackson) by yo-yo-ing his dribble in the lane and looking briefly at Jackson’s man (Harden, on the wing) before the dish. On one of those Cook passes, Westbrook saw Parker deciding whether he should leave Cook to help on Westbrook in the lane, and he took one extra hesitation dribble into the paint, forcing Parker to commit.
This was “pure†point-guard play amid some classic Westbrook madness, and it was not possible last season.
Nor was the growing star-star cooperation that the Thunder have built into their offense this season, a process that culminated over the last few games. The loudest announcement of this breakthrough came at the end of Game 4, when the Thunder ran the same play 10 straight times â€" a play in which Westbrook dishes to Harden on the left wing and then sets a pin-down screen for Durant near the right elbow area. Just like that, all three stars were actively involved in a simple action, one that forced the Spurs into a series of terrible choices.
That kind of thing has been happening all season. Durant and Harden have developed their own pick-and-roll routine to mirror the Westbrook/Durant combination that has been devastating for two seasons. Brooks and his staff have figured out dozens of little ways to run Durant off baseline-area screens â€" with enough variations to counter any defense. They’ll change the location of the screen or the identity of the screener, and they’ll often give Durant two options from which to choose â€" with one of them directing Durant’s cut to Harden’s side of the floor.
That kind of subtle spacing design is crucial, and the Thunder have gotten better at it. Even two of the crunch-time possessions in Game 5 that looked like classic stagnant Thunder possessions, with Durant stationary in the corner, were at least rooted in the idea of using all three stars at once. They were pick-and-rolls with Harden and Ibaka, designed to force Parker into sagging at least a little off Westbrook on the right wing â€" and thus opening up the possibility of a quick pass to Westbrook, and a blow-by drive or open jumper:
Durant is merely lurking in the right corner, but his placement there â€" and not in the other corner â€" is by design, occupying the nearest help defender for any potential Westbrook attack.
This kind of thing doesn’t have Popovich-level style points, but those aren’t always necessary when a team has scoring talent like the Thunder’s. But sometimes the Thunder do actually approach that level of complex cooperation within their half-court offense. Early in Game 4, for instance, they ran a set that would delight any X’s-and-O’s guru:
Durant started the play by screening Tim Duncan in the paint as Duncan’s man, Kendrick Perkins, stepped up to set a high screen for Westbrook. That simple pick put Duncan way behind the play and forced Durant’s man (Jackson, No. 3 in the above photo) to slide off Durant and help Duncan contain Westbrook’s drive:
Durant pops away from the mess at the foul line, freeing himself up for a possible open mid-range shot at the left elbow and forcing Harden’s defender (Manu Ginobili, in the left corner) into a horrible choice: scramble up to Durant or stick with the Sixth Man Award winner. He chose the former, Durant passed to Harden, and Harden eventually drove baseline, drew some help and missed a layup that led to a Thunder put-back.
It has been a slow and sometimes frustrating evolution, but there has been an evolution. There will be setbacks, as was the case during the stretch run of Game 5, but they haven’t been enough to derail the Thunder yet. The Spurs still have a chance to do that, but if they fail, the only obstacles left might be the more rugged defense of an Eastern Conference stalwart and, failing that, the luxury tax.
Harden and Ibaka are both eligible for contract extensions this summer. Giving each one a max-level deal would rocket Oklahoma City to about $77 million in payroll for the 2013-14 season, well above the current tax line (about $70 million) and above any reasonable internal league or union projections for that season’s tax line. And that figure includes salary for only seven players, and none for future draft picks or other guys currently on their rookie deals.
Using the amnesty provision on Perkins would trim $8.47 million from that bill, but the Thunder would still have to form a team around the remaining players. Four max deals could add up to about $68 million alone in 2015-16, and though the tax line could jump as high as $80 million by then, it would still be hard to avoid. In the meantime, it looks nearly impossible to avoid. And remember: The tax rates increase in 2013-14, and teams that pay the tax in three out of any four seasons face a harsh repeater penalty.
It would seem nearly impossible for the Thunder to avoid the tax while carrying four max deals, giving them only a few options:
• Drive a hard bargain with Harden and/or Ibaka, and win â€" a scenario other teams can torpedo by offering max-level deals. Some team will throw that kind of money at Harden, but what about Ibaka?
• Lose one of them.
• Pay the tax over the short term and hope the tax threshold increases more than expected over the next half-decade, by the end of which most experts estimate it could be just shy of $80 million â€" and not around, say, $90 million, where it could jump by 2021
For now? Let’s enjoy the steady improvement of a great, great team.
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