Lineup versatility is no longer a weakness for the Thunder
By Jared Dubin
Last season’s Thunder had a good record, but they were not actually a very good team. Despite finishing 47-35 and earning the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, the Thunder only outscored their opponents by 62 total points — a differential that would normally yield a 43-win squad.
It was largely due to the miraculous clutch-time exploits of Russell Westbrook that the Thunder outperformed their point differential by a Western Conference-high four wins, but even highlighting Oklahoma City’s incredible clutch play (only the Spurs, Celtics, Warriors and Cavaliers had a better record in games that entered clutch time, per NBA.com) doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story.
The Thunder pretty much only found success last season in one configuration: when Westbrook shared the floor with Steven Adams and Victor Oladipo. That trio played together for 1,441 minutes and outscored its opponents by 6.7 points per 100 possessions. Had the Thunder operated at that level over the entire season, their per-possession point differential would have been exceeded by only the Warriors and Spurs.
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Of course, those minutes accounted for only 36 percent of their team total on the year, and it was in those other minutes where Oklahoma City barely approached NBA-level competence. In the 2,520 minutes where at least one of Westbrook, Adams or Oladipo was not on the floor, the Thunder were outscored by 4.1 points per 100 possessions. In other words, removing any of those three players from the game turned the Thunder into the Knicks.
Billy Donovan actually gave eight different five-man units that featured none of those three players at least 15 minutes of floor-time last season; all eight of them were outscored by at least 2.7 points per 100 possessions and they had a collective net rating of negative-19.9. Removing those 210 minutes alone from Oklahoma City’s ledger would have nudged their season-long net-rating north by over a full point.
More than anything else, it’s this issue Thunder general manager Sam Presti attacked with gusto this offseason. The marquee moves were the low-cost/high-ceiling acquisitions of Paul George and Carmelo Anthony, but the signings of Patrick Patterson and Raymond Felton are relevant here as well. In other words, while adding two players capable of easing Westbrook’s scoring burden was important, just as important was what the addition of those players and others will do for the Thunder’s flexibility. More simply: Billy Donovan will be able to roll out different kinds of lineups he simply couldn’t last season.
It seems fitting to start with Felton, since he might actually provide the team with its biggest upgrade. It’s frequently overlooked that the jump from sub-replacement level to competence is often significantly larger than the one from average to good or good to great. Oklahoma City had arguably the NBA’s worst backup point guard rotation last season. Semaj Christon, Cameron Payne and Norris Cole combined to play 1,417 minutes last season, and they produced -0.1 Win Shares during that time.
Felton is no great shakes, but he’s a credible NBA player who even during his worst seasons played at a level far exceeding that of the Thunder’s trio of backups during the 2016-17 season. He’s found new life over the last two seasons as a point guard who can soak up minutes behind and occasionally alongside starter-quality players. Using him alongside George, Anthony or both should allow the Thunder to weather the Westbrook-less minutes far more easily than they did a year ago. He’s even capable of handling defensive assignments against either backcourt position in case Donovan wants to use him and Westbrook in the backcourt together, moving to a two-point guard lineup the Thunder have not really been able to show since the days of Reggie Jackson.
Similarly, Patterson gives Oklahoma City an element it was missing last season after the trade of Serge Ibaka: a stretchy big who can play either the four or five, spacing the floor with his jumper on one end while covering a lot of ground with his quick feet and good instincts on the other. Patterson won’t provide the same level of rim protection or even switchability as Ibaka, but he’s a more reliable outside shooter on a team that now has an even greater need for a low-usage, high-efficiency spot-up man after the acquisition of two high-usage wings. Patterson will come off the bench now that Melo is in town, but he figures to play a healthy portion of his minutes with Oklahoma City’s star trio and Adams in order to give the Thunder a bit more spacing than they’ll give with Andre Roberson alongside that foursome.
Being able to play big or small with equal effectiveness is not a tool the Thunder had in their bag last season. And while that used to be a luxury for teams, it’s now a near-necessity; you have to be able to shape-shift at a moment’s notice in order to adjust to what your opponent is doing or else you’ll be blown off the floor. There is no team better at this chameleon act than the defending champion Warriors, who simply stomped the Thunder in all three matchups last season. Golden State gave Oklahoma City all it could handle in its typical alignment with Zaza Pachulia on the floor, but once the Dubs down-shifted with Andre Iguodala or Shaun Livingston, the Thunder just had no chance.
The Thunder are still not in the same stratosphere as the champs, but their offseason additions make them more well-equipped to handle a head-to-head matchup. The Warriors could focus all their defensive energy on stopping Westbrook last season, and nobody on the Thunder could make them pay for it. As a result, Westbrook over-shot himself into some of his worst games of the year. It would still be wise for the Warriors to focus the lion’s share of their attention on Russ, but he now has two teammates capable of making them pay dearly for that, plus several others that are more likely to take advantage of the times when he pierces the defense with the intention of finding a shot for a teammate rather than himself.
We all know about the prowess of Olympic/catch-and-shoot Melo, and his powers have not been exaggerated. Even on the decrepit Knicks teams of the last few years, Anthony has made 40.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts. George has made 41.8 percent of his attempts over the same period of time, while Patterson has connected at a 37.0 percent clip. Having those shooters on the floor will also be a tremendous boon for Adams, who saw his effectiveness neutered last season as teams routinely collapsed on his dives to the rim, content to let the Thunders bricky shooters fire away from outside instead of giving up the lob. Anthony and George, obviously, are also more than capable of creating their own shot in one-on-one situations, and the defensive attention paid to them should provide Westbrook even more runway to attack off the bounce.
The increased flexibility will carry over to the other end, where the Thunder now have two elite wing defenders to stick on opposing scorers. Roberson is one of the best in the league at forcing wings into difficult shots, but he can also get played off the floor by certain defenses. If the Thunder had to remove him from the court last year, they had nowhere else to turn for top-flight wing harassment. That’s obviously no longer the case, but his presence should also allow George to at times check the less threatening wing, saving some of his energy to help Westbrook and Anthony on offense in a way he couldn’t when he was in Indiana.
Having Roberson, George and Patterson around him should also free Carmelo of the burden of ever having to defend anyone even remotely threatening off the bounce unless the Thunder are playing one of a handful of teams. Moving to power forward on a near full-time basis should help hide his worst defensive shortcomings, a necessary shift that’s been a long time coming. If Donovan really wants to get weird, he can even trot out lineups featuring Melo as a super-small-ball center, forcing teams to remove their best interior defender from the floor. That’s not advisable on a regular basis, but it can work against certain opponents.
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All of these things were simply not viable for last season’s Thunder, and through a series of low-risk moves, they were able to open up a plethora of options they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Putting together a new Big Three is nice and attention-drawing and removes some of the need for the Thunder to pressure Westbrook for an answer about his future right now, but it’s in the deployment of those two additional stars and some of the recently-acquired supplementary pieces that we’ll really see their value to this year’s Thunder team.