Billy Donovan didn’t coach his team all that well in his first-ever NBA playoff series in late April. The Dallas Mavericks might have lost a 4-1 series to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but Rick Carlisle coaxed so much more out of the resources available to him. The talent disparity between the two teams was too pronounced for coaching to ultimately matter in that series, but the point remained: Carlisle worked magic. Donovan, a friend of the Mavs’ coach, did nothing to suggest that he’d be ready to outcoach Gregg Popovich in round two.
Then came Game 1 against the San Antonio Spurs. That was Saturday, April 30.
Feels like two years ago, not two weeks, right?
What a difference a fortnight makes.
It’s one of the more abrupt coaching turnarounds in recent NBA playoff history, Donovan’s ability to shift gears against Pop and the Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals. The content of the coaching matchup itself suggested that the Spurs would move their chess pieces more effectively than the Thunder, but the more precise detail which pointed to a San Antonio triumph is simply that Donovan stood in the cauldron of the NBA playoffs for the first time as a coach. This was utterly new to him, and no NCAA tournament experiences with the Florida Gators — even the back-to-back national championships and (from 2011 through 2014) four straight Elite Eights could have fully prepared him for the 67-win Spurs.
When Scott Brooks took down Pop and the Spurs in the 2012 Western Conference Finals, he had the prior experience of leading the Thunder into the 2011 West Finals against Dallas. He enjoyed the benefit of a “ramp-up” period in the seasons prior to his 2012 breakthrough. Donovan didn’t have that.
That he beat Pop in the playoffs in his first try is a significant story. It cut against conventional wisdom, but more than that, it validated OKC general manager Sam Presti’s belief that Donovan was ready to guide this team right away, not just at some point down the line. The idea that a coach has to learn on the job is an entirely reasonable one, but for Oklahoma City, such a notion could have turned into a disaster. “Succeeding later on in his tenure” could have meant nothing for Donovan; it would have been much too late if this series spun wildly out of the Thunder’s control and led Kevin Durant to play elsewhere in 2017. By winning this series, Donovan didn’t merely knock out the big, bad Spurs. He told Presti, his players, and the league at large that he can hold his own in this theater of competition.
It is easy to think that when Coach A outcoaches Coach B, the outcome is primarily the product of what Coach B failed to do. In this series, however, the losing coach became somewhat peripheral to the proceedings. The Thunder’s 4-2 series win was more the result of what the winning coach — expected to absorb a loss in his first playoff rodeo — doing the only thing he reasonably could have done: exhibit patience in the hope it would pay off.
NBA bloggers — this one very much included — wrote multiple articles over the course of the season about the Thunder’s woes, especially in the fourth quarter. Leopards don’t ordinarily change their spots — not quickly, and not within the confines of the same NBA season. If a team exhibits certain habits in the 82-game slog preceding the playoffs, and that team isn’t a No. 1 or No. 2 seed which coasts to the finish line because it knows it will be superior in May and June, it’s hard to think that team will make necessary course corrections in the postseason.
Yet, that’s exactly what Donovan and OKC achieved.
Attentive, steady, don’t-take-plays-off defense.
Efficient, engaged, lucid two-way play from historically erratic players such as Dion Waiters or historically imbalanced offense-defense players such as Enes Kanter.
Big-man basketball with Kanter and Steven Adams, offsetting a slower Tim Duncan and an utterly impotent David West.
The Thunder brought these and other central attributes to the table. The Spurs’ calcifying bench, long a strength, turned to dust. Oklahoma City had the better bench in this series by a wide margin. The 1-10 potency the Spurs had used so many times to subdue inferior playoff opponents was nowhere to be found. OKC wielded that Thunder-bolt… and Donovan deserves the credit for bringing such a reality into being.
It’s hard to say that Popovich, who has so consistently developed bench players into essential cogs, lost his way. His bench — partly comprised of R.C. Buford’s acquisitions (can we repeat the claim that Neil Olshey should have been Executive Of The Year?) — just didn’t perform. Yes, some of the combinations Pop put on the floor didn’t work, but which Spur reserve was consistently good in this series?
It wasn’t West. It wasn’t Manu Ginobili. It wasn’t Patty Mills, a completely different player compared to the 2014 Finals against the Miami Heat. Kyle Anderson didn’t work at all. Kevin Martin fell on his face in Game 6. Andre Miller didn’t play until garbage time.
Donovan endured various slings and arrows during the regular season and the Dallas series, but all the while, he knew he’d have to develop a bench in order to stand up to the Spurs. Waiters has so consistently lacked a conscience or a basketball IQ, but in this series, he played — gasp! — intelligently. He became a revelation at both ends of the floor, especially on defense. Andre Roberson became the small-scale but important contributor who pushed OKC over the top in Game 6. Kanter’s defense isn’t elite by any means, but it’s so much less a liability than it used to be.
Player development — polishing skills and creating even more of a culture of commitment — gave Donovan the advantages he needed in this series, and his lineups turned his plan into a fruitful outcome.
Gregg Popovich lacked enough players he could trust on a nightly basis in this series — he didn’t really fail. Billy Donovan was perceived as a coach who couldn’t turn Dion Waiters and Enes Kanter into the kids of players who emerged in these just-concluded West semifinals. Donovan’s successes, not Pop’s shortcomings, told the tale in this Thunderous silencing of a 67-win ballclub from Texas.
