Tonight the Thunder played the Slump Buster for the Suns, getting them off the shneid for a six game losing streak. The Thunder didn’t really lose this game or give it away, it was thoroughly taken from them by the Suns with their sheer hustle and grit-the best of it coming in the fourth quarter. The Thunder were completely outplayed in all areas of the game.
The Thunder opened up a nice lead nine point lead in the first quarter, which reached a high of thirteen at one point. It looked like the Defense that the Thunder had been displaying in the last 1/2 dozen games was going to continue into the Durant 2.0 era, but I think it was just a lot of spotty shooting by the Suns. The first quarter wound up being the only quarter we won of the four. We shot 51% in the first half but the Suns kept chipping away at our lead, aided by the Thunder’s 12 first half turnovers. Shaq picked up his 3rd foul just 3 1/2 minutes into the second quarter and I really thought we would get it done. At the half we still had a small lead, we were in charge of the boards, and the 12 turns only produced 8 points for the Suns. We were looking ok.
In the second half the Suns were just a lot more dominant than in the first. Suddenly they began to really hit the boards, and we continued to turn the ball over. Oh, and the Suns found their shooting stroke, shooting 52.5% in the second half to the Thunder’s 41%.
The difference in this game was really two things: hustle and the Suns bench; and well, maybe it’s just one thing because a ton of the energy and hustle came from the Sun’s bench players. Louis Admundson, Jared Dudley and Leandro Barbosa just really dominated. Admundson and Dudley were defensive pests in a big way. Admundson really laid hard fouls, played great defense on Green and Collison and Dudley went crazy with tough rebounding, steals and tough scoring in the trenches. Meanwhile Barbosa hit three big time threes in the fourth quarter as part of his 22 points in 24 minutes. The Thunder were really slow closing out on the shooters all night when the Suns swung the ball around the arc.
The Suns got 44 points and 19 boards from their bench, while we had 13 points and 5 rebounds from ours. Jared Dudley alone had 7 rebounds (four offensive) in the fourth quarter, while the Thunder as a team only managed 8 in the quarter. Ouch. He tossed in seven points and a steal in the quarter as well.
The two areas where the Thunder are actually very good are rebounding and getting to the line. We are top ten in the NBA in both, but we were dominated in both by a hungry Suns team tonight.
| Pace | Eff | eFG | FT/FG | OREB% | TOr | |
| OKC | 92.0 | 103.3 | 48.1% | 22.5 | 32.4 | 21.7 |
| PHO | 115.2 | 53.8% | 25.0 | 38.1 | 17.4 |
Random Bullets:
- The first thing I noticed is that the Thunder weren’t running tonight as they’ve done so many times to their detriment against fast paced teams. The game ran at 92 possessions, below both team’s season average and the Sun’s latest running pace with Alvin Gentry.
- This version of “7 seconds or less” Suns offense isn’t. They just don’t even come close to running like the Suns under D’Antoni. I guess it’s really just a change of personnel with no Amare, Marion, Diaw and a big Cactus in the middle.
- Early in the first I saw something I haven’t yet seen this season: Krispy nads actually put the ball on the floor and drove on Shaq. It worked great and got Shaq his first foul. Why don’t we do this more?
- A quick peek at the four factors above will immediately show you that we lost all four. Ouch!
- The Suns did a lot more attacking the basket than I’ve seen in the past. Usually the Suns are really bombing away from outside.
- Thabo and Weaver’s defense seemed to bug Jason Richardson; he only got 20 minutes and was 3/9.
- It was some sort of Latino fan appreciation night in Phoenix tonight and so the Suns had “Los Suns” on their uniforms. Maybe I am just a little ignorant, but why is the “Los” in spanish and not the “Suns”? Shouldn’t it say “Los soles”?
- Not sure where Earl Watson was. Chucky got his minutes tonight and he didn’t get in the way, which is nice, but his defense was pretty poor. More than once when he was guarding Nash or Dragic, a Suns player would come up and screen him. He kept going over the screen, but it was so slow and pathetic it didn’t accomplish anything. To the best of my understanding, when the screen comes a teammate is supposed to call it out to the player getting screened to give him time to “belly up” to the ball handler and get over the screen before it cuts him off. It never happened and Chucky was way out of position. Later I saw the Thunder began switching on the screens more often instead of fighting over them.
- Nobody on the Thunder can guard Barbosa on a drive. When the dust settles this off season it would be nice if we could find a bench guy for our roster that can play some lockdown defense on those super fast tiny guys in the league like Barbosa, Aaron Brooks, Nate Robinson, Jason Terry etc. Weaver and Thabo are great, but at 6′-6″ or so, they are just too big for those “specialty” type of players. If westbrook has to guard them, who is going to guard the opposing point guard?
- Jeff Green sure got knocked around a lot tonight. I saw him get hammered in the face by Shaq’s shoulder, and go down hard on the wood at least two other times.
- With the recent debate about Durant’s defense I found myself watching him more on that end tonight. He definitely can’t stay in front of Nash or Barbosa, but I thought he did okay on Grant Hill and Jason Richardson when he was on them.
- We picked up our sixteenth turn halfway through the third period!
- I thought Steve Nash’s 7 turns were really stinky until I saw that Westbrook had 8.
- Weaver hit a deep, deep three as time expired to tie the score at the end of the third. The Sun’s announcer was telling a story that Weaver’s father hit a three from beyond half court back in the day as a high schooler to win the Wisconsin state high school championship game.
- We were outscored in the fourth by 11 points, and by 20 after the first quarter.
- Malik Rose didn’t even get out of the paint to contest a three by Dudley in the corner.
- With 2:12 left in the 4th, Barbosa hit a second of two back to back threes from the corner, right in front of the Thunder bench. After the shot went in, Thabo held up both hands like he was saying ” whats the deal with that”? I couldn’t figure out what he was griping about so I ran the DVR back a couple of times and saw Grant Hill actually wrap up Thabo with both hands and his body for a long second to keep him from closing out on Barbosa’s shot. Terrible “no call”.
- We had 100 scoring opportunities (FGA”s +FTA’s), but the Suns had 108 thanks to all those rebounds they collected and all of our turns. They had 22 points off of our 20 turns.
- Thabo is a steal machine. He is getting his hands on 3.2% of our opponents possessions since he’s been a member of the Thunder, far and away the team leader. If he continued that for a season he would be fifth in the league, just behind guys like Chris Paul and Jason Kidd. He had three more tonight.
- To put our turns in perspective, we had a 22% turnover rate, which my college dropout educations tells me is actaully more than 1/5th of our possessions ended in a giveaway to the Suns.
And finally, a guy named Robbie runs a site called Statsheet.com and he has some great stats and fantastic charts that can be viewed and embedded on blogs. Here are a few from tonight’s game. Thanks Robbie.
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Kev :
Durant on Defense: I’ve watched every play of the Suns game closely (thanks to Tivo) and Durant’s defense (or lack thereof) comes into focus ESPECIALLY when you compare his performance to Thabo’s. Twice in the 1st quarter, Durant was back on transition and did nothing to deter a shot (no contest, no blockout) - he just stood there and hoped for a missed shot. He is also not good at blocking out (this is where rebounding affects defensive totals) - he gave up an easy two to Jared Dudley in the 2nd quarter because of it. Other times he rotates to help inside (as he should) but forgets (or doesn’t care enough) to rotate back out when his help is not needed - he gave up a 3 to Barbosa in the 4th quarter for this reason.
He’s not really bad defensively - I was expecting worse - but there are little things that he does (or doesn’t do) that really add up over the course of a whole game. I will do this again tonight to see if any other patterns develop.
I agree with this 100%. I tried to watch as much of Durant's defense as I could get, but I couldn't just singly focus on him because I needed to see what else was happening since I was writing the post game wrap. But when I did, you would see that he's not a bad defender. His long arms really help him. But in light of Thabo's defense, he is a poor distant cousin.
Thabo seems to be our "Bruce Bowen". If you concede that Westbrook may not be our 1 going forward, and you go get one in the draft, Westbrook and Thabo and Weaver then have to jockey for minutes at the two, and Weaver and Thabo and Durant all want minutes at the three...
Anyway, there are some great point guard possibilities on display here in a couple of days. I am really interested to watch Maynor from VCU in the tourney. He is supposed to be really great, and he will likely be available with a late first rounder.
I wasn't able to see this game until last night (thanks DVR!), and I came away realizing how little these guys actually played together so far this season. Once Brooks took over and moved line-ups and positions around, it still took us several games to gel. It takes a young team longer to adjust, and we have Thabo who is still rather new, especially with Durant on the floor.
RW may have hit his rookie wall. Physically, he still looks ready to go, but mentally, his focus seems to check out. I'm betting it's the grind of a long season wearing his focus out.
Give these guys a handful of games to gel again, and maybe we'll see some better overall team play shortly.
Durant on Defense: I've watched every play of the Suns game closely (thanks to Tivo) and Durant's defense (or lack thereof) comes into focus ESPECIALLY when you compare his performance to Thabo's. Twice in the 1st quarter, Durant was back on transition and did nothing to deter a shot (no contest, no blockout) - he just stood there and hoped for a missed shot. He is also not good at blocking out (this is where rebounding affects defensive totals) - he gave up an easy two to Jared Dudley in the 2nd quarter because of it. Other times he rotates to help inside (as he should) but forgets (or doesn't care enough) to rotate back out when his help is not needed - he gave up a 3 to Barbosa in the 4th quarter for this reason.
He's not really bad defensively - I was expecting worse - but there are little things that he does (or doesn't do) that really add up over the course of a whole game. I will do this again tonight to see if any other patterns develop.
the problem is that NBA has all these combo guards - translation: the guy is too short to be a 2 and can't really play point, so we will make a new, nifty name for them. I don't know why they don't lock Westrbrook in a room and make him watch the 4th quarters of all these games - they are almost sickening to watch. Yes, he is a good player, and you can't discount all the things he does on the floor, but I would prefer Watson late in games over Westbrook - some would say play Westbrook at the 2 in those circumstances, but Thabo is better defensively, and that's what you need when you are trying to hold on to a lead in the 4th. Obviously, if you are losing in the 4th, you'd take Russell. I wish Brooks would do this, someone please tell me why he won't . . .
Dudley is a backup PF in the nba at best (and I really, really like Dudley, always have even back in his Boston College days). Dudley plays against second team opponents while Green plays against starters. Green's point production and rebounding rate more than reveal his value, period. And here's, again, where I genuinely dislike the "End All" status that +/- has these days...factor in the minutes, competition, point production, rebounding rate, steals generated, tipped balls, proper boxing out, correct defensive rotation, altered shots...then tell me if you think Dudley is comparable to Green.
Turnovers are always a part of a rookie PG's development as they will still be adapting to the speed and role of being an NBA PG (especially one who was a SG in college...and still actually might be best suited as one, but hey, experiments are fun, right?).
The hustle part...I have no defense for.
It seems to me like Russell will just concede the turnover sometimes (if that makes sense). He'll be out of control in the paint and instead of gathering and backing out, he'll go ahead and force it and give it away. Or he'll be on a break and will attack the rim and lose control of the ball and never recover. He'll turn it over in bunches. He may go 20 straight minutes controlling it well, but then he'll turn it four times in a two minutes. It just seems like he'll get in over his head and try to do too much instead of letting the game come to him. All in being a 20-year-old rookie I suppose.
I don't know if that made sense, but it did in my head.
again, Westbrook looks HORRIBLE in the 4th - play of the game is when he drove in the lane and got hurt - NO I dont want people to get hurt - but when it's not really a safe move going inside 1 on 3 - especially when one of the three is Shaq - agree with others - Westbrook is NOT a point guard . . .
Keith :The last thing a young team can afford is to get outhustled. I put some blame on the players (despite not being 100%, it seemed like the team wanted to rely on Durant too much), but in the end it is on Brooks. A coach of a professional team is mostly a motivator and strategist. As such, to be a good coach you have to get your guys to play their hardest and be in the best position available to win. These kids are still young, and should be feeling pretty good about the past few months as well as getting Green and Durant back. Brooks needs to pounce on all that and have his guys bringing their best effort every minute they are on the floor.
On a side note, and it is something I’ve said before, I don’t think Westbrook is the PG of the future. His court vision is inadequate for a PG, his ball-handling is far below what is required from someone who has the ball as much as Westbrook, and he is at his best playing off the ball. The team tends to fold in crunch time and under pressure because they have a one-dimensional offense down the stretch. They will give the ball to one guy and just let him force a shot on his own. Rarely do they run a play that involves more than one pass. The problem I see is that PG is a difficult position to develop (assuming the Thunder aren’t drafting Rubio), and Presti/Brooks might be opposed to starting over at that position. But to be honest, they should be developing Durant to be able to play a point-forward role in the future anyway. As the franchise player, he’s going to be asked to be more than a shooter.
If Durant can develop a Lebron-type distributing skill, then it won’t hurt to have a scoring/defensive PG (just looke at Mo Williams). But if Durant is always going to play off the ball and pass mostly when doubled (think Al Jefferson, Danny Granger, or Vince Carter), then the Thunder are going to need someone who can actually run an offense, not just pass the ball every so often (a huge difference).
Can't agree more on this...
To be more clear, we need someone who will find the best option and we need all our players to be ready to pass again if a better shot presents itself. With Westbrook's limitations, Durant's directive to take the shot almost every time, and the lack of movement on offense in general at the end of games, we have to see some change take place.
Execution has a lot to do with defense. Because the Thunder play too much one-on-one basketball late in games, it's a lot easier to defend them. This is a big reason we need Durant to learn how to play point-forward, or pick up a true PG in the offseason.
I honestly kind of feel like we let one get away last night. Didn't execute late when we had a chance to go up 5 or 6 with under seven to go.
The last thing a young team can afford is to get outhustled. I put some blame on the players (despite not being 100%, it seemed like the team wanted to rely on Durant too much), but in the end it is on Brooks. A coach of a professional team is mostly a motivator and strategist. As such, to be a good coach you have to get your guys to play their hardest and be in the best position available to win. These kids are still young, and should be feeling pretty good about the past few months as well as getting Green and Durant back. Brooks needs to pounce on all that and have his guys bringing their best effort every minute they are on the floor.
On a side note, and it is something I've said before, I don't think Westbrook is the PG of the future. His court vision is inadequate for a PG, his ball-handling is far below what is required from someone who has the ball as much as Westbrook, and he is at his best playing off the ball. The team tends to fold in crunch time and under pressure because they have a one-dimensional offense down the stretch. They will give the ball to one guy and just let him force a shot on his own. Rarely do they run a play that involves more than one pass. The problem I see is that PG is a difficult position to develop (assuming the Thunder aren't drafting Rubio), and Presti/Brooks might be opposed to starting over at that position. But to be honest, they should be developing Durant to be able to play a point-forward role in the future anyway. As the franchise player, he's going to be asked to be more than a shooter.
If Durant can develop a Lebron-type distributing skill, then it won't hurt to have a scoring/defensive PG (just looke at Mo Williams). But if Durant is always going to play off the ball and pass mostly when doubled (think Al Jefferson, Danny Granger, or Vince Carter), then the Thunder are going to need someone who can actually run an offense, not just pass the ball every so often (a huge difference).
But I've had my say. Will step back at least for awhile or longer.
By raw +/- the only player Green has worse results playing with than Durant is Wilkins, nearly exactly the same general pattern as last season even if the results are only half as bad. Green is up to average as a player- rather than filling a specific traditional role- and with Durant the results remain quite weak. Even if it gets to neutral that isn't going to drive you into being a .500 to have the cornerstone pair neutral, they should be leading things, offsetting other areas of weakness. And they got to get up to neutral first.
Would I trade Green for Dudley straightup? Probably not, not knowing Dudley's stamina, though from a re-signing value standpoint it might not be so bad an idea i fth erole they both fit is first big off the bench. Green for Dudley and something else to get market value out of him would be more attractive.
Neither is really the right guy to be a forward next to Durant.
I wouldn't have drafted Green at 5. I'd have been happy enough to get Dudley at 22 instead if I felt I need an undersized 4. And while I appreciate what those guys can do in today's NBA I'd probably have tried for a more traditional PF. Dudley is more traditional.
Alex I don't dislike Green, I am just not as impressed with the pick, performance or prospects as many. I didn't say he sucks or anything in the vein of dislike. I simply noted some of the facts.
Per minute last night Dudley scored almost as much and almost double the rebound rate. And was +13 on +/- while Green went -11.
But Presti picked Green and thinks he is a cornerstone. Next season will probably be enough time to judge the wisdom of that.
At this point Green probably shouldn't be a starting SF. Not enough mid-range game or passing. Just a bit above average for his size and probably below average for a SF as a passer despite the big hype about that ability which nows seems tied to his college system and not him.
Does he become above average at PF? It probably won't be because of defense or rebounding because of size. He scores more because he takes more shots. He has advanced to league average eFG% abd TS%. Does it rise further? It better, probably only way he becomes above average. Something you'd expect from a 5th pick right?
CROW- you really dislike Jeff Green, don't you? Did you really need 5 posts to sufficiently bash him?
In all reality, would you trade Dudley straight up for Green? I hope not...
Outside his 3 point shot his shooting has tailed off in last 10 games quite a bit. Barely 40% overall so he is probably at 30% or lower on that mid-range J recently compared to 35% for the season.
Thabo doing lots of stuff right but shooting . scoring is just passable, still clearly below league average. Wouldn't want him taking 10 shots a game at that rate in the future like now though.
Green is the 14th worst mid-range shooter out of about the top 125-150 most frequent shooters according to 82 games. Take the 3 when it is there or drive all the way or get fouled. Mid-range is last resort and last in efficiency.
I was thinking about this little article from Draftexpress last night as I was watching Dudley get busy with the Thunder. I read it a couple of years ago when we traded for Green, and it was brought back to my memory last night:
NCAA Tournament: Stock Watch (round of 32, Saturday)--Down/Neutral
March 18, 2007
It wasn’t a great night for Jeff Green, who was thoroughly outplayed by Jared Dudley on both ends of the court and finished the night having shot just 4-12 from the floor and having committed 5 turnovers. Early on it was Dudley and Marshall repeatedly getting behind Green (and the Georgetown defense in general) for easy baskets, and Green really forcing things on the offensive end. BC didn’t make much of an effort to come out and guard the multi-talented forward, and he spent the entire night clanking outside shots off the rim. He rushed a couple of ill-advised post moves as well, and made a poor pass midway through the second half that led to an easy Boston College bucket and kept the Eagles’ dwindling momentum alive for a bit longer.
http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Jeff-Green-368/
A GM who liked Dudley could probably have taken Noah at 5 (or purely of talent potential Thaddeus Young and sort it out later) and traded up to take Dudley. I wasn't high on Noah at the time so that is hindsight but I was high on Dudley and not big on Green at 5.
Dudley's slightly better shooter overall from field on eFG% and TS%, almost twice the offensive rebounder (normally a pretty big part of being a PF), a third less turnover rate, twice the steals rate makes him slightly better on PER and way better on "offensive rating" which really values overall efficiency. Whether he could handle 35 minutes remains to be seen but he wasn't handed it like Green.
I'd guess it is too late for Dudley. Probably grows in importance with time at Phoenix. They really wanted the cheap contract too. Presti probably never bid on him because he had Green - at 3 times the price, 2-3 times the future salary expectation but not much difference in adjusted +/- rating.
I love Jared Dudley. The Thunder needs to trade for him in the offseason.
I asked myself if you bench Westbrook for a game for an 8 turnover night to make a point. I know they won't. So I'd watch what he does differently in light of it. Does he show real concern in the game to improve this and can he at this stage? Or is last night is quickly forgotten and quickly repeated to the 5+ turnover level again? He gets 5+ turnovers is about 25% of his games so far. They've got to get that under control if he is going to be the PG.
Just as assists are only part of the story of quality passing, turnovers are only part of the story of weak passing / dribbling. Other plays are affected to a lesser but still important degree. Westbrook actually has more ball=handling turnovers than bad passes.
Westbrook's 8 turnovers should call for something to change.
November he had one game with 5+ turnovers. December 8. Jan. 0. Feb. 3. March is half over and he is at 4, on pace to get to 8 again. These should be rare.