What Went Wrong with the Oklahoma City Thunder?
All season long the freshly united trio of Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony did just enough to keep the hype afloat. Criticism was knocked back with valid chat about the time it would take to adjust to each other and every frustrating slump was followed by a triumphant run of wins, often against the best teams. They beat the Warriors twice. They beat the Rockets twice. They put 148 on the Cavs in January. Then they got dumped out in the first round of the playoffs by the Utah Jazz in six games. What went wrong?
Yeah… that depends a bit on your expectations. Two years ago Kevin Durant left and Serge Ibaka was traded and Russell Westbrook took this franchise on his back to average a triple-double, win the MVP award and unexpectedly take OKC back to the playoffs. Prospects were dim for a Thunder team whose second top scorer was a pre-Indy Victor Oladipo but they somehow managed to win 47 games before losing in five to the Rockets in the first round.
That was an overachievement so Sam Presti did his magic and brought in Paul George and Carmelo Anthony. Giving Russell Westbrook the star power help that he supposedly needed to get this team back into contention… fast-forward it and they won 48 games and lost in six in the first round. One extra regular season win, one extra post-season win (and that was a record second half comeback). Westbrook still averaged a triple-double. You can ask what went wrong but you can equally ask what ever went right to supposedly make them so much better.
They never had that urgency to figure it out, it was always something they expected to come naturally and so their season ended with Russell Westbrook hurling up 43 shots while Paul George shot 2 of 16 and Carmelo Anthony sat impatiently on the bench for most of the fourth quarter. Westbrook’s gotten a fair bit of heat for that performance and it’s fair to say that it’s a difficult task to win in the playoffs when your whole offence consists of one dude creating everything, only occasionally pausing to take advantage of one of the best screeners in the game (chur Kiwi Steve).
But it’s also fair to say that he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Carmelo Anthony’s exit interview statements were surprisingly flammable but one thing that he said was blatantly true: they never had a plan for this. Getting Melo and PG was all about opportunism, getting two of the best available scorers in the belief that they’d figure it all out later. Similar to how their draft strategy tends to involve taking guys with length and athleticism and banking on being able to teach them to shoot later. They never figured it out, not really. And the sloppier it got, the more Westbrook felt he had to revert to his worst tendencies. And he still doesn’t have many shooters around him.
The Westbrook thing is a culmination of a few problems which is why it’s kinda stupid to pick a side in the polarising debate around the dude. Paul George shrinking like he did in game six doesn’t help Westbrook’s balance. Getting outscored by 19 points with Carmelo Anthony on the floor in G6 doesn’t help either (they were +14 in 22 minutes without him). Steven Adams had a great game but he’s not a player who can create his own offence and Westbrook, to his credit, went back to him over and over, Kiwi Steve getting 11 shots for his 19 points.
Melo’s problem is that he’s not built to play as a spot-up shooter. He needs the ball in his hands and he needs to get those jab steps going to spark himself up. Catch and shoot stuff is not who he is but it’s who the team needed him to be. Hence the worst field goal percentage (40.4%) of his career. He had a season’s offensive rating worse than Nick Collison or Terrance Ferguson. But, nah, Melo’s not about to sacrifice a bench role. He’s never come off the bench in over a thousand NBA games and he’s due $27.9m next season. He ain’t sacrificing no bench role.
Which… is an issue. Not the bench thing because even though he was trash when it mattered, he’s of no more use to OKC playing off the bench with reserves than he is starting. It isn’t how many minutes he plays, it’s what kind of basketball he plays and bringing him off the bench won’t make him a better fit.
Nope, the problem’s that fat-ass contract which is probably three times what he’s worth. This team already has Adams signed to make $24m next time and Andre Roberson’s getting eight figures too. Westbrook signed a massive extension a year ago. They can’t afford to add almost anything to this roster, not even if Paul George leaves, unless they get extremely creative… although let’s not rule that out with Sam Presti working the phones.
Carmelo doesn’t want a diminished role and that’s a bit selfish of the dude, to be honest. Say what you will about Russ but in his own head he does everything he does for the team and the win. His stat-padding is real but this team wins way more when he dominates than when he doesn’t, and he saves the real egregious stuff for blowout games. As for the rebounding thing, that’s a strategy that Steven Adams and the other big fellas are a hundy percent fine with, it’s a way of getting the ball in his hands as often as possible and Westbrook is a rare point guard who can go up and get those suckers.
Melo not being willing to budge for the sake of the team is the opposite of that, which makes Billy Donovan going out of his way throughout the season to give lip service to Melo’s mentality and sacrifices seem very different in hindsight. Less like applauding the acts and more like an attempt to encourage him to take it further. Nursing a delicate ego. But the bigger problem is that he can’t play with Westbrook.
OKC’s made their bed. Westbrook is who Westbrook will always be, no point trying to change him just like there’s no point trying to change Anthony now. The best incarnation of this Thunder team is not going to look like a modern, efficient offensive scheme. The best incarnation is Westbrook dashing around Adams screens and looking to get to the rim or kick out to a variety of well-placed shooters. Ball movement might not always come fluidly but that’s okay so long as they can limit those ugly pull-ups that Russ falls back on too often. Melo isn’t a spot shooter. He has no role in that scheme but he’d be brave to decline the player option in his deal and there aren’t many contending teams who’d even consider a trade (plus he has a no-trade clause).
Playing that way won’t kill too many teams like the Warriors or Rockets do and it’ll still be over-reliant on Westbrook. However that style of play would at least unleash Steven Adams on the pick and roll. It’d also allow them to focus on what can still be a top-five defence next season once Andre Roberson returns, even without Paul George there (but especially so if he stays). Get some 3&D dudes out there and see what happens.
It’s arguably reeling Russ in on the defensive end that matters most, getting him to stop gambling for steals and forcing the other four guys to react around him. This team can afford to miss shots when they’re locked in defensively and are hauling in offensive rebounds at record rates (chur Kiwi Steve again). The criticism of Russ will still continue but the thing about how he plays is that if that game is close in the fourth quarter then he’s capable of utterly taking over. Ask the Jazz about game five and see what it’s like to play against a guy who can swirl up a tornado of momentum in, like, three possessions.
Coming back to what went wrong, the obvious thing is that they weren’t as good as people thought they were. Paul George pissed his bed in the last game and Melo was close to unplayable in that improvised offence. Can’t defend, too slow, missed shots. They were the two reasons that OKC were meant to be better this time and they were incredibly bad. So why expect the team around them to be any better?
While we’re at it though, Billy Donovan deserves some heat for taking too long to make the necessary adjustments. Quinn Snyder outcoached him for Utah and it wasn’t close. There were some nice tweaks in there along the way but nothing like how Utah took Steven Adams out of the middle games by targeting him physically and drawing out fouls. Nothing like how Derrick Favors and Jae Crowder stepped up or how Ricky Rubio ran the floor. OKC won game one easy and then were barely in the series after that.
But to be fair to Billy D, it was also a brutal matchup for the Thunder. Without their best defender against a team that had played fantastic all the way down the stretch of the season, a rare team that could take away their rebounding advantage, which magnified the slapstick shots they kept taking.
Didn’t have much of a bench either and that never helps. Patrick Patterson was irrelevant in that series while Ray Felton was underused. Alex Abrines can shoot but he can’t defend. Josh Huestis can defend but he can’t shoot. A shame we didn’t see more of Grant and Adams on the court together but the Thunder also lacked another bench big man (2Patt was probably meant to be that dude). Who’d have thought they’d miss Enes Kanter, aye?
There’s a lesson here about assuming that a team of stars will automatically become a star team. Not every personal/stylistic difference is overcome at the click of a finger, some can’t be solved at all. Billy Donovan has always seemed more like a facilitator than a dictator, just lucky his experience as a college coach means that moulding a new team every year is something he knows how to do.
Difference is that college players are willing to fit in. NBA players aren’t always so adaptable and that’s not their fault. They’ve got habits burned into them over years and years at the top level. Carmelo Anthony spent fourteen years doing one thing and in year fifteen he was asked to do another. Not to say that trade was a mistake because the gamble was worth it a hundred times out of a hundred… but if you wanna know what went wrong in the playoffs, that was pretty much where it began.
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