Wednesday Bolts – 4.6.11
Sebastian Pruiti of NBA Playbook with a terrific post on how Perk affects Ibaka: “Ibaka is so dangerous as a weakside shot blocker, but until Perkins arrived, he was unable to be that threat to the best of his ability. The reason why is because Ibaka was forced into defending more centers while being the on ball defender more (vs. being the one coming from the weakside). A few reasons why this is less than desirable for Oklahoma City. First, with Ibaka covering centers, there is a size difference that forced him into situations where he would front the basketball.”
A lot of talk about Jeff Green yesterday. It started with a big post at Celtics Town: “Part of Green’s allure is that, during the best of times, he can make basketball look as easy as riding a bike downhill. Some players just look like natural basketball players. They move with a certain grace, an elegance that makes the game look effortless. Green’s one of those players. Even when he’s racing past Charlie Villanueva, he looks like he’s gliding. Even when he’s working hard, he looks like he’s hardly working. He’s one of the few players capable of joining Ray Allen in the “Players Who Probably Don’t Even Need to Shower After a Game” club. Yet despite all that smoothness, Green doesn’t contribute on a nightly basis.”
Zach Lowe of SI: “Again: It’s worth nothing that Oklahoma’s defense struggled horribly when Green played power forward compared to when Green played small forward, and opposing power forwards regularly lit up the Thunder with Green on the floor at that spot. That was a bigger problem with the Thunder because Green was their starting power forward and played a much higher percentage of his minutes at that position in Oklahoma City than he will in Boston. Perhaps Green’s size disadvantage against power forwards is a bigger deal than his alleged quickness disadvantage against small forwards?”
Doc Rivers sort of went after Green too.
Matt Moore of CBS Sports: “If there’s one area of the trade that seems to show some signs of life towards the systemic approach, it’s the center swapped. Nenad Krstic’s rebound percentage has risen to 14.2 percent from 11.9 in Oklahoma City (5.6 from 4.4 per game, while Kendrick Perkins’ has dropped from 19.0 to 18.2. Granted, there’s an extremely small sample size on both sets, especially considering the small number of games Perkins has been available for due to injury. Interestingly, Krstic is actually out-performing Perkins at the Celtics’ biggest weakness, offensive rebounding. The Celtics are dead last in that category, but Krstic has made a slight improvement in his numbers there.”
Power rankings from SI: “The Thunder’s post-All-Star break roll abruptly came to a halt with road losses to the Blazers and Clippers. The two defeats followed a similar pattern. OKC built double-digit first-half leads but couldn’t get its offense in gear after intermission, relying too much on outside jumpers from Kevin Durant (who was 3-of-14 in Portland and 4-of-14 in Los Angeles in the second halves, including a combined 2-for-12 from three-point range). Meanwhile, Russell Westbrook never found his rhythm in either game, shooting a combined 6-of-27. The Kendrick Perkins trade sacrificed offensive options (Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic) in exchange for stauncher defense. But that puts even more of the onus on the team’s offensive studs — Durant, Westbrook and (management hopes) sixth man James Harden — to produce.”
Darnell Mayberry on last night: “Look, I’m not trying to be hard on Russell Westbrook. But something is seriously up with him and it probably needs to be addressed in the offseason. Here’s the thing: 77 games into his third season, I can’t say that his decision-making has gotten that much better. It’s grown tremendously from his rookie season to this season. You can’t take that away from him. But his third-year development has left more to be desired. Westbrook can be an incredibly useful scorer thanks to his explosiveness. But it’s nights like tonight, when Russ doesn’t have his shot falling, that would be the perfect time for him to downshift and set up plays for his teammates. But he rarely, if ever, does that. Maybe he doesn’t know how yet. Either way, I think we know what measure of improvement to be on the look out for from Westbrook next season.”
Roundball Mining Company: “You’ve got to give credit where it’s due, as the Thunder played excellent all night, especially on the defensive side of the ball where they held the highest scoring team in the league to only 94 points. If we had made some more free-throws and prevented the Thunder front-court from bringing down so many boards this quarter might have ended differently, but again it’s hard to take away from how good the Thunder played. As the game concluded I happened to glance up at the board displaying rebounding, blocks and steals; the Thunder led 62-46 in those categories combined.”
Denver Stiffs: “Thunder center Kendrick Perkins did exactly what the Thunder wanted him to do: he got into Nene’s head and flustered the Nuggets’ big man. Nene had one of his worst shooting nights in recent memory and continued his streak of awful free throw shooting. It will be interesting to see how Nene responds to Perk on Friday night.”
Zach Lowe of SI on Russell Westbrook: “Let me be clear again for the Thunder-Heads: Westbrook is a fabulous player, and the Thunder’s offense is one of the league’s best. You could even argue that the Thunder’s supporting cast, minus James Harden (improving every day!), is comprised of guys who need Westbrook and Durant to carry this much of the load. That argument probably short-changes Serge Ibaka and Nick Collison, but it’s a valid issue at times for a team that is giving heavy minutes to Thabo Sefolosha and Perkins. And yet, the balance still isn’t quite right in Oklahoma City. The fact that the team is so good already anyway should frighten us all.”
KD still sixth for the MVP on ESPN’s award watch: “Along with his sidekick Russell Westbrook, Durant, the league’s leading scorer, has led the Thunder (fourth in the West) to 50 wins for the second straight season.”
SportVU Hoops looks at some efficiency numbers: “While diving deeper into the numbers of the four perimeter players, we noticed Kevin Durant’s efficiency changes dramatically in wins versus losses. In wins Durant scores a point for every 1.77 touches, while in losses he only scores a point for every 2.16 touches.”
There will be a season ending party with KD and James Harden’s rapper buddy Privaledge at America’s Pub next Wednesday. Cover charge is five bucks if you’re interested.