Last Two Minute Report: How the Nuggets took down the Thunder

The Thunder and Nuggets always seem to provide a thrilling contest when they play against each other, and Thursday’s meeting was no different. Both teams came into the game tired — Oklahoma City has traveled a ton over the last two weeks and it was the third game in four nights for Denver — so both teams got whatever they wanted offensively for most of the night. Then the Nuggets went cold early in the fourth quarter and allowed a Thunder team that trailed by as much as 20 points to mount a comeback.

Picking up the action with two minutes left in the fourth quarter, Denver is up by five points. Jamal Murray hits on consecutive drives (sandwiched around a Russell Westbrook 3-pointer over Nikola Jokic) to bring Denver’s lead to six with 90 seconds remaining.

Down six and desperate to complete their big comeback, the Thunder immediately got out in transition following Murray’s second layup in 30 seconds. Oklahoma City has a tendency late in games to get stagnant by either going to a Westbrook isolation or running the same play over and over until the defense proves they can stop it. Unless they get out in transition, there usually isn’t much early offense being run by the Thunder in clutch situations. Against Denver, however, they featured a nifty little set that got Paul George an open 3-pointer:

Westbrook took the ball after Murray’s make and pushed it down the right side of the court, where George waited to set a quick flat screen on Will Barton. George then popped to the middle of the floor, where he received a flare screen set by Steven Adams, who was still getting down on offense and was therefore able to slightly alter Barton’s path to getting back in front of George.

Read More: Pick-and-roll adjustments helped the Raptors win

Early offense can be key for teams looking to put up points quickly at the end of games, especially against a defense that is expecting long, drawn-out possessions. Another important component of the Thunder’s early offense in this situation is that getting the ball to George in the middle of the floor was already something they wanted, so the floor is perfectly spaced for him to run a quick pick-and-roll with Adams even if he doesn’t have the shot immediately.

After a Jokic turnover and another bucket from George, the Nuggets’ lead was cut to one point with about 40 seconds remaining. As they had been doing for most of the fourth quarter, Oklahoma City switched the high ball screen from Jokic for Murray, leaving Adams on an island against the young guard:

The Thunder switched this screen a few times in the fourth quarter, but this one was particularly egregious because of the timing. Oklahoma City has to know that Denver wants to run as much time off the clock as possible in order to make any two-for-one situation more difficult, so there was no reason to softly switch and let the Nuggets dictate the defensive matchups when the screen was set with 16 seconds on the shot clock. This has been a problem all year for the Thunder, who are willing to switch into any alignment the offense wants. It’s usually teams hunting Carmelo Anthony, but on Thursday it was Murray singling out Adams as the weak link.

Down three with 32.9 seconds left, the Thunder still had time for a two-for-one but needed a quick basket. Just as we’ve seen with the “Hawk Set” they’ve run into the ground, Billy Donovan and his staff are fans of using what has worked in the past in late-game situations. Donovan reaches into his bag and pulls out the same play they ran for the game-winner against Brooklyn on Jan. 23, in which George quickly inbounds the ball to Westbrook, then sets a monstrously illegal screen disguised as a cut, leaving Westbrook a free lane to the rim:

After inbounding the ball, George makes a standard cut to the top of the key, looking for some help from Adams. Wilson Chandler, Adams’ defender, even comes up to the level of the screen to switch onto George, but George never makes it that far, as he “accidentally” runs into Murray on the way through and just so happens to open up a perfect path for Westbrook to get the two-for-one.

Mike Malone has been in the news lately for his choice to not call a timeout late in the Nuggets’ recent loss to the Celtics, so he naturally takes the first of his two timeouts remaining to set up an important play for Denver after Westbrook scores in just four seconds to cut the lead back to one. However, this was a situation in which he may have wanted to hold off. Westbrook was on the ground after hitting the layup, and while the Nuggets had a defensive lineup on the floor that didn’t feature Jokic, they had a 5-on-4 advantage if they had pushed the ball up the court.

If they press that advantage, perhaps they get an easy shot at the rim or an opportunity to go up four and ice the game away. If they don’t end up with an advantage, then they call the same timeout and set up a play, just as they did. In the grand scheme of things, there are very few shots in that transition opportunity with which Malone would be comfortable and perhaps he didn’t trust the five-man lineup he had on the floor to execute that in a big spot, but there might have been an advantage Denver threw away with the timeout.

Out of the timeout, Oklahoma City switched up their defensive unit, bringing in Jerami Grant for Adams. Adams had already been roasted a few times by Murray in isolation, so bringing in the more agile Grant made sense for the Thunder. Just as they had in previous possessions, Denver went to a Murray-Jokic pick-and-roll, but Murray rejected the screen when Westbrook overplayed it and just missed the jumper:

Without Adams in the game, Jokic was able to get on the offensive glass and made two free throws after the Thunder were forced to foul him. Down three once again but with no timeouts and 5.6 seconds on the clock, there was no time for another quick two for Oklahoma City.

The concept of fouling up three is hotly debated among coaches — some swear by it in the right situations and others are afraid of the three-shot foul opportunities it presents. Denver elected not to foul in this circumstance, though perhaps they would have if George or Westbrook had caught the ball with their back to the basket. George caught the ball near the midline and took two dribbles to get to his spot. Ideally, the Nuggets could have fouled while the ball was on the way to the ground so George couldn’t have claimed he was shooting even if he did flail his arms toward the basket.

They didn’t, and George made them pay with a step back 3-pointer that made James Harden proud:

The final play will be dissected all over the internet today, with most of the blame being heaped on Westbrook for falling asleep as Gary Harris moved toward the weak side. There are others who would argue Westbrook was staying on the strong side to help on Murray or anybody else who came into the paint, assuming that Jokic wouldn’t throw the crosscourt pass on such a vital play.

He did, Harris hit the shot and Westbrook took the heat, both from Twitter and from a fan on the court.

Donovan vouched for Westbrook after the game: “You’re always going to be basically ball-side. Ball-side is where you want to be. Again, with where he was providing help at the rim with 1.4 seconds (left), and Jerami going down…what happened was they inverted. Harris just raised up. It went from a short closeout if it got skipped to the corner where his man was…it turned out to be a lot longer because Harris moved all the way up toward halfcourt, which made the run from Russell a lot more difficult.”

Given that Donovan emphasized being ball-side in his postgame comments, he was probably telling his guys in the huddle the exact same thing, making Westbrook’s misplay slightly less egregious. And even though Harris lifted to the wing and got a clean look, Westbrook still almost got there, with slo-mo replays showing that he tipped the ball with his finger and was millimeters away from one of the most athletic defensive plays of the year.

In hindsight, it obviously would have been good for Westbrook to be closer to his man to make a play on the shot, but it’s not readily apparent that he fell asleep — he was just helping elsewhere and thought his man had left the play entirely. If Murray receives the ball and somehow gets past George into the paint, Westbrook helping that far off to deter his shot would have been a brilliant defensive play. If Jokic sees Grant fall and throws the ball to Chandler, Westbrook is right there to defend him.

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In Malone’s play, it’s probable that Harris was actually supposed to stay in the corner to give as much room to Murray as possible. He broke it off and got the game-winner to go down, but that doesn’t automatically make it an awful defensive play by Westbrook.