Thunder Player Power Rankings: Formula won

After the Thunder beat the Kings on Sunday, I asked Nick Collison if the way they played that game was the formula they needed to follow to keep winning games without Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. As in, get an early lead, ride a little momentum to build on it, then hang on for dear life in the fourth quarter, hitting just enough big shots to survive.

For the most part, Collison agreed, but noted that the past few games, the Thunder have kind of been ironing things out and more than anything, are letting go of feeling sorry for themselves.

“I thought tonight we came out and were finally starting to get over that mindset of ‘Oh, we’ve got so many guys out,'” he said. “We just went out and tried to take the game. And that’s how we have to play. I thought we were the aggressor from the start. Some of these other games it seems we’ve kind of tried to feel our way out and how’s it going to be out there, but we can’t do that. We have to be a team playing at a real high effort to win.”

The Thunder actually closed impressively against the Kings, outscoring them 34-28 in the fourth quarter, never relinquishing the lead. It got close a few times, but OKC made just enough plays. Good starts have been pretty common for the Thunder so far this season, as they have a scoring margin of +3.0 in the opening quarter. They’ve been able to sneak up on teams with energy, but when it came to sustaining that over the period of 48 minutes, the deeper opponents have just wore them down.

Looking at the Thunder by quarter this season, it’s pretty easy to see a trend. In the first quarter the Thunder are scoring 113.4 points per 100 and allowing 104.6. Second quarter, the offensive rating nosedives to 88.9 and they allow 97.9. Third quarter, 84.3 and 97.7. Fourth quarter, the offense comes back a bit at 101.0, but the defense drags severely at 124.8. Pretty clear what’s happening there: Fatigue is real.

But as the Thunder begin to get more bodies back, they may be able to level things out a bit more. Reggie Jackson has played 40-plus minutes in all four of his games so far this season, which needs to be trimmed, but for the most part Scott Brooks has done a quality job of managing time. It’s a tough spot, trying to sort through 48 minutes with only eight or nine players, especially considering the Thunder have been hit most in their backcourt. Brooks has used heavy zone looks, which not only have confused opponents, but also allowed the Thunder to mistmatch lineups and save a bit of defensive stamina.

As you look over the schedule, while the first 12 days of the season were kind of outrageous, things soften considerably. The next road game against a playoff team is Dec. 18 against the Warriors. With the next three against the Bucks, Celtics and Pistons, there’s an opportunity to claw back to .500. But that can’t be the goal defined for this team. You can’t look that far down the line. It’s a game-by-game approach, and really, a quarter-by-quarter one. Just survive, 12 minutes at a time, and try and hold in there as long as possible. The 2-5 record isn’t pretty to look at, but all in all, the Thunder are holding their own quite admirably so far.

Player rankings:

1. Reggie Jackson (last week: N/A)

I wrote a lot about Jackson here after the Kings game.

The cliffnotes: It’s an awkward situation for both he and the Thunder right now as he potentially sees this as a chance to audition, while the team desperately needs him to lead them. The better Jackson plays, the more his price tag goes up as well as the more he’s convinced he can handle a job on his own somewhere else. But at the same time, the better he plays, the more likely it is the Thunder win.

2. Serge Ibaka (last week: 2)

For as outstanding as Ibaka has been early this season, here’s a weird thing: After posting four blocks in the opener against the Blazers, he had only four combined swats the next five games before getting four against the Kings.

Ibaka’s early season has been about his new-found perimeter stroke as he’s popped 14 3-pointers already, just nine short of what he hit all of last year. And since he’s become more of the focal point of the offense, opposing defenses are even beginning to key on him from the outside. Ibaka has figured some of that out, using a pump fake on the wing, but he still isn’t quite comfortable putting the ball on the floor, especially when defenders collapse on him and he has to look somewhere to pass.

But this is all part of a greater evolution and I think no player might benefit more from this time of Westbrook and Durant being out than Ibaka. He’s a bit of a robotic player that has been used in very straightforward offensive ways — stand there, screen here, pop there, shoot here — but has never had to really improvise or think much on his own. Now he’s creating his own shot at times and finding looks more out of feel and less out of someone getting it for him. Very good things looking ahead.

3. Jeremy Lamb (last week: N/A)

Remember when a large number of fans wanted to go ahead and give up on Lamb for good after an ugly preseason game? Might have been a wee bit premature, don’t you think? Keep this in mind: Lamb is younger than Victor Oladipo. He’s still just 22 years old and last season for all intents and purpose, was his rookie year. Lamb still has a long way to go, particularly defensively, to get to a reliable point. And he’s often far too inconsistent shooting as it seems if he misses his first three shots, he’s bound to miss 10 more.

But his first two games starting at shooting guard have been nothing but positive. Both games, 17 points while shooting 46 percent from the floor. He’s pulled in 12 rebounds and dished out four assists in Sunday’s game. Lamb can play. For him, it’s always just going to be a matter of consistency.

4. Sebastian Telfair (last week: 8)

You could make a strong case that Telfair is playing the best basketball of his career right now. That sounds ridiculous, but averaging 10.9 points and 4.3 assists currently, his previous best season was 9.3 points and 5.9 assists in 2007-08 with the Wolves. Obviously this isn’t sustainable for Telfair as he’ll drop to the end of the bench when Westbrook returns, but he’s certainly played better than I ever thought he would.

5. Nick Collison (last week: 9)

I found this quote from Collison really interested after the Kings game: ” “I worked on it a lot. I knew that to get on the floor, [Brooks] wants the 4-man to be in the corner in a lot of sets. I thought I could help myself and help the team. It’s a work in progress. It feels good to get some makes, but it’s something I’ve worked on all year and hopefully I’ll get more comfortable with those opportunities.”

He’s talked about it before, that Brooks wants his bigs to be able to space, but this is quite a remarkable transformation for a guy that’s 34 years old to do. Collison hit four 3-pointers last season on 17 attempts, but before that? He had hit ONE on a grand total of 21 attempts. This season already he’s dropped five on 13 tries. That’s putting in some offseason work right there.

6. Steven Adams (last week: 6)

Adams hasn’t quite been the dominant force that he was in preseason, but he’s been solid overall as the Thunder’s starter. He’s playing 28.6 minutes a game and is only fouling 4.0 times a game, which is really positive for him. He’s averaging near double-double range despite only having posted one thus far — 9.0 points and 7.3 rebounds.

And again, something to note: He’s 21 years old. That’s one year older than Joel Embiid. A year younger than Cody Zeller. The same age as Alex Len.

7. Kendrick Perkins (last week: 3)

I’m starting to get the feeling that Perk’s 17-point eruption was an outlier or something, because he’s only scored 11 total points since. But he did put in a big time shift against DeMarcus Cousins which counts for something.

8. Lance Thomas (last week: 7)

I wish I could rewind to like August and tell that me that Lance Thomas would be making big crunchtime plays for the Thunder this season and Vine the confused look on my face.

9. Ish Smith (last week: N/A)

Smith has no idea what he’s doing for the most part — though he did have a better hang of things Sunday — but he knows one thing to do on the floor: go fast. He’s got a really good handle and he can get into the paint to either float a runner or kick to someone else. He’s a solid NBA player, albeit one that’s likely only on the team for another couple weeks.

Inactives: Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Morrow, Grant Jerrett, Perry Jones III, Andre Roberson