Oklahoma City Thunder find a creative rotation

In an otherwise nondescript February game in Dallas, a major change occurred for the Oklahoma City Thunder and superstar Kevin Durant.

To that point, Durant had typically played the entire first and third quarters under first-year head coach Billy Donovan. In this game, Donovan subbed Durant out of the game with six minutes left in the first quarter, marking a change in Oklahoma City’s rotation that has persisted through the rest of the regular season. By taking Durant out of the game earlier, Donovan has been staggering his minutes with Russell Westbrook to ensure that one of his two stars is on the floor at all times. All year, opposing teams have been decimating lineups with both Durant and Westbrook on the bench, outscoring the Thunder by an average of 9.3 points per 100 possessions. Keeping the two on the bench for stretches at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters was hurting the team and undoing all the great work Durant and Westbrook were able to do while they were in the game.

This pattern is incredibly important not just because of the actual results, but because of the tiny step towards creativity that it represents. Previous head coach Scott Brooks was often criticized for not trying this rotation adjustment, instead keeping Durant and Westbrook’s minute mostly overlapping. The Thunder have had two of the best players in the league for several seasons but have continually struggled to figure out how to get the most out of the combination. This kind of move could help, but it also shows a willingness to try new things, something which hasn’t always been the case with Oklahoma City’s on-court strategy.

Durant and Donovan spoke with ESPN’s Royce Young after that game against the Mavericks about the decision to stagger the two stars.

“Man, whatever he wants me to do, I’m down,” Durant said. “I felt good. I’ve been in this league long enough I can figure it out. Coach just came to me the other day and said he wanted to try it out, and I said it was cool. It doesn’t really affect me. At some point I’m going to get it going, at some point I’m going to make shots. Tonight it just started to come around. I’ve just got to stay patient. I can’t force anything because I’m coming out a little earlier, I’ve just got to play my game. What happens, happens. Just try to play winning basketball.”

“[Durant has] been great in terms of always wanting to do what’s best for the team,” Donovan said of the rotation change. “I just told him, in particular the fourth quarter, I think we’ve got to have either you or Russell out there to start that fourth quarter. I went to it early and we had talked about it the last couple days and he wanted to try it, he was all for it.”

Durant now plays six stints in a normal game, as opposed to the four stints most starters get. He’ll come out around the six-minute mark in the first quarter and then relieve Westbrook around the three-minute mark. Durant plays without Westbrook for the next six minutes or so before taking his next rest. Durant will then come back in with about six minutes left in the second quarter to play out the rest of the half with Westbrook. The pattern plays out similarly in the second half.

To illustrate the pattern, here is the Thunder’s game flow from PopcornMachine.net for the turning point game against the Dallas Mavericks.

That second stretch in each half is key for Durant, when he gets to go up against opponents’ second units at the end of the first and third and beginning of the second and fourth quarters.

Of course, there’s a downside to this decision: Durant and Westbrook share the floor for fewer minutes than they did previously. As one would imagine, lineups featuring both do quite well for Oklahoma City — the Thunder have averaged 117.1 points per 100 possessions and a +12.7 point differential when both superstars are on the court this season. However, this decision has more to do with minimizing the time when opponents can take advantage of the Thunder than maximizing Oklahoma City’s best lineup combinations. It’s a trade-off — a little less of their combined dominance in exchange for limiting the time when the Thunder can be exploited with neither on the floor.

There are questions about how sustainable the new rotations are, including whether playing Durant in these shorter stints hurts his ability to get into a rhythm in the game. He’s said all the right things in the media about sacrificing his comfort for the good of the team, but on-court microphones have caught him complaining to Donovan about his inability to get into the flow of the game when he’s only playing in these six-minutes-on, three-minutes-off stretches. Rhythm is especially important for Durant as a shooter; his three-point shooting is down almost three percentage points since the rotation change.

Locker room dynamics probably played a key role in why Durant is the one changing his minutes distribution instead of Westbrook. Like Andre Iguodala agreeing to come off the bench for Steve Kerr in Golden State, the rest of the Thunder are going to be more reticent to come forward with complaints about their shots and minutes when they see Durant sacrificing for the good of the team. However, specifically in terms of on-court production, it seems that Westbrook would be a better fit for this type of change than Durant. Westbrook’s game is less about getting into a rhythm and more about simply eating whoever stands in front of him for dinner that night. Additionally, putting Westbrook out there against backup point guards in stretches would allow him to play his gambling style of defense without the same repercussions (though Donovan would probably prefer it if Westbrook were generally discouraged from gambling as much as he does).

However, changing Westbrook’s minutes would also affect Serge Ibaka, who plays far more minutes with Westbrook alone than with Durant alone, due to his ability to space the floor and protect the rim to make up for some of Westbrook’s defensive mistakes. Durant doesn’t need as much help from Ibaka on either end of the floor, so he normally plays with either Enes Kanter or Steven Adams in these stretches without Westbrook. Durant’s superstar-level ability helps him quite a bit with his rhythm problem; the same would probably not hold for Ibaka if he were to play the same short stints.

Balancing minutes for stars is no easy feat, finding ways to preserve offensive and defensive systems while getting the most bang for your buck out of their talents. Tyronn Lue might want to take a look at what’s going on in Oklahoma City and apply it to his Cavaliers team that has struggled to find a consistent rotation since he took over for David Blatt in January.

Since Lue took over, the three-headed monster of Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, and LeBron James is only outscoring opponents by 2.5 points per 100 possessions, about the same rate as the Thunder do when Westbrook is playing without Durant. It’s been almost two full seasons and the Cavaliers have yet to figure out the best way to play all three guys together; James is best when he can run the offense with shooters surrounding him, Love is best when he can catch at the elbow and make plays for himself or teammates, and Irving is best when he can run the pick-and-roll from the top of the key and get into the paint. Love has become the sacrificial lamb on the Cavaliers and it’s not only affecting their offense; Love’s lack of touches on one end is hurting his already lifeless defensive effort on the other. Serge Ibaka plays a very similar role to Love on the Thunder and has gone through his own struggles dealing with Westbrook and Durant, telling The Oklahoman’s Anthony Slater:

“When we play better and everyone touching the ball on offense, it help our defense. It’s hard. I’m gonna tell you the truth, it’s hard sometimes, when you play hard, you play your (butt off), you play so hard on defense, then you come to offense and you’re going to be out there in the corner for 4, 5, 6 sometimes 8 minutes and you don’t touch the ball. We human, man. It’s hard. But we’re playing great basketball, Russell and Kevin are doing a better job moving the ball, making us to feel a part of the team, too.”

Love has a similar problem in Cleveland, even though he’s not exactly playing his butt off on the defensive end. Love was a number one option in Minnesota and put up monster numbers, but he hasn’t been able to recreate that sort of success in Cleveland, even when James and Irving sit and the offense revolves around him once again. The Cavaliers have put up just 101.8 points per 100 possessions over the past two seasons with just Love on the floor, a mark that would rank 29th out of 30 teams this season. However, the combination of Love and James has been fantastic for Lue since he took over for Blatt; lineups with Love and James on the floor and Irving off are scoring an insane 139.9 points per 100 possessions. Swap Irving for Love and the Cavs are still outscoring opponents by 11.6 points per 100 possessions. Take James out of the equation and things crater; Irving and Love are being outplayed by 1.4 points per 100 possessions when James hits the bench. As it turns out, LeBron James is still pretty good at the whole basketball thing, despite rumors to the contrary.

Love can’t carry the team by himself, but Irving sure can. Irving’s true shooting percentage goes up when he’s running the show by himself, as do his percentage of attempts at the rim and from three and, most importantly, Lue’s Cavaliers outscore opponents by 6.3 points per 100 possessions with only Irving on the floor, almost as good as their baseline +6.9 since Lue took over. Irving’s game lets him make plays for himself and others in the pick-and-roll by getting into the lane on a Tristan Thompson or Timofey Mozgov screen and wreaking havoc once the defense collapses toward him. Letting Irving do his thing against backup units while James and Love sit would be a great way to use his talents and let him get his touches and numbers while also letting James and Love play together as much as possible. Putting Irving on the same minutes distribution as Durant is in Oklahoma City is the perfect way to accomplish this while still starting and ending halves with all three stars out there.

Lue has shown that he likes to balance each of his three stars so that each of the three possible pairs play roughly the same amount of time together, with no regard given to how his team performs in those situations. Since Lue took over in January, the combination of Irving and Love that’s being outscored has played just 17 fewer minutes than the combination of James and Love that’s put up a +34.9 per 100 possession point differential.

Lue will have plenty of practice in the early rounds of the playoffs to test various combinations against teams who are game-planning for the Cavaliers, a luxury not offered to many across the league. The East is better than it’s been the last few years and Cleveland has its problems, but they’re still the best team and shouldn’t have a problem reaching the Finals.

Both Cleveland and Oklahoma City are a tier below the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors, and both teams will likely need to beat one of that pair for a championship (or both in the Thunder’s case). There isn’t a lot of time to add new wrinkles to offensive sets and defensive schemes, but rotational tweaks and spreading out minutes offer a path for both teams to keep getting better.