The OKC Thunder are anything but OK at the moment.
The Thunder live under a black cloud, but as you’ll note in the title of this piece, their problem is particular to this season.
At least, that’s the best and fairest way to view the matter in the present tense.
Steven Adams Has Game-Winning Buzzer-Beater Waved Off
WATCH: https://t.co/ZavngPfRnG #Thunder #Mavs pic.twitter.com/IiFUF2DXBp
— The Ledge (@TheLedgeSports) April 19, 2016
The face of Steven Adams doesn’t merely capture the Thunder’s reaction to the disallowed basket at the end of Game 2 in this Western Conference first-round series. That face represents the way the Thunder are feeling about the series in general, and more particularly, about their baffling inability to play well in fourth quarters. It is one of the most repeated realities of this NBA season: OKC has been terrible at closing down fourth quarters when the outcome of a game has been in doubt. That the Thunder have two of the 10 best players in the world — Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook — makes their endgame impotence all the more puzzling.
OKC is the classic embodiment of a team which is lethal and overwhelming when everything’s clicking, but so markedly frail when it gets punched in the mouth or dragged into the muck, as the Dallas Mavericks were able to do in Game 2 on Monday.
Here’s the most starting aspect of Dallas’s win, other than the fact that it was achieved in the face of injuries to J.J. Barea (DNP) and Deron Williams (11 early points, but a non-factor thereafter): The Mavericks didn’t even shoot well.
Dallas played a subpar offensive game, hitting just 5 of 19 threes and only 10 of 19 free throws. The Mavs didn’t put together the perfect game, or even a largely blended and balanced game. They stunk on offense. An 85-point showing should have resulted in another beatdown.
Somehow, the Thunder managed only 84 points.
Let’s be brutally honest here: OKC very likely doesn’t lose this game — and doesn’t even come particularly close, either — if Scott Brooks is on that bench. What Billy Donovan is giving the Thunder right now does not match what Brooks would have been able to provide. There’s no question that Oklahoma City is being held back by its coach.
Yet, before you direct a flamethrower of withering criticism in Donovan’s direction, step back and realize that this was a very distinct possibility all along.
Donovan has spent the past two decades coaching college basketball, and moreover, in one of the sport’s weaker high-major conferences, the SEC. To have expected Billy D. to master the NBA in one season was — perhaps in hindsight — unrealistic. What comes across more than anything else from this first season of “Billy Ball” in OKC is that if the Thunder wanted to upgrade from Scott Brooks — at least within the context of this first season — they needed an NBA veteran, not someone who would have to invariably spend this season learning on the job.
Translation: This season isn’t an indictment of Donovan’s coaching performance or acumen; it bears ample markings of a get-acquainted season, in which a coach and his staff are trying to absorb information. How else to explain the relative lack of movement in OKC’s offense in fourth quarters? How else to explain patterns and tendencies which are conspicuous in terms of how little they differ from what happened under Brooks?
It’s as though Donovan doesn’t want to overload his players with too much information, and wants them to trust their natural skills. Yet, the Thunder and their stars needed more guidance, not less; fresh insights, not a reliance on old inclinations. Again, though, hiring Donovan invited this stagnation in the first season.
We’ll truly know a lot more about Donovan as a coach — and can assess him in a fuller light — 12 months from now.
This season, though? It’s hard to give Donovan a full grade, and it’s even more difficult to see how he can possibly do what needs to be done against Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs in the second round.
Oklahoma City and general manager Sam Presti might not have thought they were punting this season when they hired Donovan. They certainly expected to be a title contender; they wouldn’t have fired Brooks if they didn’t. Yet, it seems beyond clear that Billy Donovan is immersed in a learning process whose merits (or a lack thereof) won’t emerge until next season.
In 2017, everything could work out for this franchise.
In 2016, the Oklahoma City Thunder give every appearance of being unprepared for a run through San Antonio.
That’s the inescapable feeling surrounding OKC after Monday night’s loss to Dallas… and a coach, Rick Carlisle, who is fully in his element.
Nothing about the Thunder suggests they’re in their element right now. The depressing but hard-to-refute subtext: That’s not something which can easily change when a 67-win opponent looms in the next round.
