Is OKC going to figure it out before it's too late?

[Freighttrain]

They are currently tied with 5 other teams -one of which are the Clippers at 9th(!) place- in the loss column and have a 4-6 record in their last 10 games. I thought they got better after january but their inconsistency seems to be hurting them a lot. They have enough talent but depending on their final stretch there is a possibility they could, although unlikely, fall out of the play-off race, which would be crazy.

[RaptorsLife]

right now path is clear

trying hardest to get 4/5

you avoid the spurs in first round, and get rockets in 2nd round

that's all you can ask for. if ur okc

[THE J0KER]

It is too late for improvement now, after the trade deadline.

After Roberson injury one of OKC starters and all 7 bench players are G-League level players. There is no other team in today NBA with so many mediocre and useless players.

Now is too late for #3 or #4 on West, but thanks to amazing BIG4 they are probably still too good to lose #5 spot. But with such useless backup options, just one 2-3 weeks injury of Mello or Adams (not to mention Russ or PG) can put in danger even TOP8 status because DEN POR UTA LAC are good teams in a good shape, and not far away.

[Fobbie]

Man OKC ain’t that good, beat gsw/hou, then turn around and lose to lakers couple games. Don’t matter where they end up, they will probably get bounce in the 1st round.

[lambchop]

right now path is clear

trying hardest to get 4/5

you avoid the spurs in first round, and get rockets in 2nd round

that's all you can ask for. if ur okc

kawhiless spurs shouldn't be a real threat.

Anyway, if I'm OKC I wouldn't worry about seeding. As mentioned before, they only have 4 good players. They just have to try to get to the playoffs healthy and then play ball. They're a team that can beat anybody on any given night. If Carmelo can string together a couple of good games and the bench plays with confidence, they can beat any nba team.

That's just the way they're constructed. They're not like the Cavs, who have to figure out rotations if things aren't working or the warriors who can make a game-changing move by having a player like klay come off the bench etc.

I doubt they or anyone else has real expectations for them, especially since their bench is horrid. Get to the playoffs and ball out

[Walmart]

They gotta pray someone who can play gets bought out before the deadline. If they play Minnesota in the first round I think they lose.

[Pillendreher]

all 7 bench players are G-League level players

I'm the first guy to call out our bench, but that is simply not true. Felton is having a very solid season for us (Best ORtG since 2011, best PER since 2013, 2nd best shooting % on jumpers from 10 ft+ out of his career, hitting some very timely buckets). Abrines has been up and down (Donovan is doing a horrible job at getting him shots), but his jumper has still been falling. Grant, whom I hate, has taken a step forward and has become very good at making hilarious shots, attacking off the dribble, drawing fouls (117 ORtG, 58 TS%, 49 FTr). Patterson has been having a rough year, but at least Donovan has played him more as of late; his playing time should at least equal Melo's minutes. Dakari Johnson hasn't really played. Ferguson is not ready and Huestis is not an NBA level player.

Simply claiming that every Thunder player who's not Russ, George, Adams or Melo is a G-League player is hyperbolic nonsense (take it or leave it, but stats.nba.com has the Thunder's bench at +0.1 NetRtG, 13th in the league). The bench needs help, especially after the Roberson blow. Why Presti felt comfortable not doing anything is beyond me.
A huge part of that could be fixed with different rotations tho. It's insane that basically our whole rotation is built around Melo always being on the floor with Russ. It takes minutes away from Patterson playing next to Adams (+10 NetRtG lineup this season), takes minutes away from George playing next to Russ and forces Melo on the starters even though that doesn't work without Roberson on either side (+16 NetRtG Russ-George-Adams without Melo next to them this season).

Reversing the rotation could fix things. Put Melo out there with the bench, shorten his minutes, play Patterson+Adams (98 DRtG for George-Patterson-Adams without both Roberson and Anthony) way more and generally try to get the most out of Westbrook-George. Without Roberson playing the 4 on offense and covering for both Russ and Melo defensively, this version of Melo (he's shooting 30 % from 3 over his last 16 or so...) is too much of a liability to play 30+ minutes a next exclusively next to Russ. If you build the rotation like he's a role player, you can't keep playing him if he doesn't fulfil his role.

[boomershadow]

Needed to sign Tony Allen.

[Warriorfan]

Thunder are true wildcard. Dif between 5th seed and 10th seed 3 games.

Thunder are putting the effort to play D but the offense is not fully clicking relative to the names

[The_Hater]

Needed to sign Tony Allen.

Almost makes too much sense.

Regardless, OKC is top 8 in both offense and defense, a lot'of people seem to think things are broken when they’re not.

[Pillendreher]

Needed to sign Tony Allen.

He's still unsigned after clearing waivers, right?

[SlowPaced]

Roberson injury ruined their possible darkhorse status imo. The thing they had going for them was their size and defense and losing Roberson is a big blow to that.

[Alonzo_Morning]

Allen is **** done, what you talking about

[Pillendreher]

Needed to sign Tony Allen.

Almost makes too much sense.

Regardless, OKC is top 8 in both offense and defense, a lot'of people seem to think things are broken when they’re not.

Regarding defense, the scepticism is justified. Andre Roberson has played 39 games and has missed 20 games (will have missed 43 by the end of the season).

Team DRtG in the 39 games Roberson has played: 102.1 (would rank 3rd league wide)
Team DRtG in the 20 games Roberson has missed: 108.0 (would rank 24th league wide)

George-Adams AND Roberson: 94.0 DRtG in 591 minutes
George-Adams WITHOUT Roberson: 111.0 DRtG in 821 minutes.
George-Adams-Westbrook WITHOUT both Roberson and Anthony: 95.1 DRtG in 108 minutes

Like I said earlier: If you want to remain competitive defensively, this 'focus' on Anthony needs to stop. In the 20 games Robes hasn't played in so far, the team's DRtG with Anthony on the floor has been 111.6 on average. That's horrible. He's not nearly good enough offensively to make up for that. Play him according to what he has left in the tank and stop pretending that he's a star. He's not. He's a role player who's being mis- and overused.

[The_Hater]

Needed to sign Tony Allen.

Almost makes too much sense.

Regardless, OKC is top 8 in both offense and defense, a lot'of people seem to think things are broken when they’re not.

Regarding defense, the scepticism is justified. Andre Roberson has played 39 games and has missed 20 games (will have missed 43 by the end of the season).

Team DRtG in the 39 games Roberson has played: 102.1 (would rank 3rd league wide)
Team DRtG in the 20 games Roberson has missed: 108.0 (would rank 24th league wide)

George-Adams AND Roberson: 94.0 DRtG in 591 minutes
George-Adams WITHOUT Roberson: 111.0 DRtG in 821 minutes.
George-Adams-Westbrook WITHOUT both Roberson and Anthony: 95.1 DRtG in 108 minutes

Like I said earlier: If you want to remain competitive defensively, this 'focus' on Anthony needs to stop. In the 20 games Robes hasn't played in so far, the team's DRtG with Anthony on the floor has been 111.6 on average. That's horrible. He's not nearly good enough offensively to make up for that. Play him according to what he has left in the tank and stop pretending that he's a star. He's not. He's a role player who's being mis- and overused.

Good points, but on the flip side, the offense has also been much better without Roberson.

I think OKC is in good shape for the playoffs when rotations tighten depth doesn’t matter as much. I see them winning matchups with any team in the west other than the Warriors and Rockets.

[Pillendreher]

Almost makes too much sense.

Regardless, OKC is top 8 in both offense and defense, a lot'of people seem to think things are broken when they’re not.

Regarding defense, the scepticism is justified. Andre Roberson has played 39 games and has missed 20 games (will have missed 43 by the end of the season).

Team DRtG in the 39 games Roberson has played: 102.1 (would rank 3rd league wide)
Team DRtG in the 20 games Roberson has missed: 108.0 (would rank 24th league wide)

George-Adams AND Roberson: 94.0 DRtG in 591 minutes
George-Adams WITHOUT Roberson: 111.0 DRtG in 821 minutes.
George-Adams-Westbrook WITHOUT both Roberson and Anthony: 95.1 DRtG in 108 minutes

Like I said earlier: If you want to remain competitive defensively, this 'focus' on Anthony needs to stop. In the 20 games Robes hasn't played in so far, the team's DRtG with Anthony on the floor has been 111.6 on average. That's horrible. He's not nearly good enough offensively to make up for that. Play him according to what he has left in the tank and stop pretending that he's a star. He's not. He's a role player who's being mis- and overused.

Good points, but on the flip side, the offense has also been much better without Roberson.

I think OKC is in good shape for the playoffs when rotations tighten depth doesn’t matter as much. I see them winning matchups with any team in the west other than the Warriors and Rockets.

Donovan went with George+Bench instead of Melo+bench on 11/9 vs the Nuggets. Since then, Russ-George-Adams has a 112.7 ORtG with Roberson and a 114.0 ORtG without Roberson. The NetRtG tho drops from +19.0 with Roberson (holy ****, I didn't know that lineup had been that good ) to +0.6 without him. And it's all in the defense: DRtG goes from 93.7 to 113.4.

They won't be able to stay competitive defensively without Roberson with their current rotations. Acting like our trash SG rotation without Robes will be able to make up for it 'by committee' (something parts of the Thunder beat has been pushing) is delusional thinking.

[THE J0KER]

but stats.nba.com has the Thunder's bench at +0.1 NetRtG, 13th in the league

Out of 13 NBA players which playing over 36 mpg this season, two are from OKC, and similar to GSW case they have 4 players which playing over 32 minutes per game. I mentioned GSW case because their bench is virtualy TOP3 in the league by NetRtg despite Iggy is a shadow of former 6MoY permanent candidate this season. The secret of that GSW bench "success" you can find in minutes of their TOP4 stars, so at least two of them always carry on their team on the court (if we do not count garbage time during theirs blowout wins) and make their bench players look much better. OKC bench is bottom-3 in the league by minutes playing, only MIN and NOP bench playing fewer minutes. Pelicans bench doing a similar job in New Orleans by sabotaging everything AD/Boogie (+Holliday) doing on the court, and Minnesota bench has 4 players which would be #5 best player in OKC since Roberson injury (Crawford, Bjelica, Jones, Dieng) and that tells you how bad Thunder bench is.

[knuckles862]

I think they did figure it out somewhat it’s just the Andre injury messed up their groove so they have to figure it out again. But other than Hou and GSW everyone in the west has a possibility of missing the playoffs

[+2number4+]

I like how people disect the numbers but at plain sight having watch at least 50 of their 57 games, in the context of the playoffs, here is what I see.

On Defense. Carmelo Anthony is a serious liability. There's not much of a problem man to man but when the opponents start moving without the ball which usually is the case, he's almost always lost. Same with Russell Westbrook but on a milder less severe level. Roberson's replacement in one of Huestis, Abrines or Ferguson are all terrible. Huestis probably is the least terrible but he's not half as good as Dre. So you have 3 players getting lost in the shuffle when the shuffling players happens. So they should do something about that. I am endorsing the idea of Grant playing 4. Slide PG down to 2. Same athleticism and quickness, better defense and more length.

On offense. No matter how you disect their OFFRtg, come playoffs, it all boils down to one thing, OK3 clicking offensively makes OKC a hard team to beat especially when Melo and PG is having at least a decent night around the perimeter regardless of the opponent's performance. It just opens up A LOT of real estate for the ball to find the basket. Their offense is a lot more flexible than most possibly read it. Name it, they have it in spades.

If and should Westbrook refrain from taking volume long 2s and 3 pointers, they should be good. Because when he does, make or not, it greatly affects the game of his co-stars including Adams. Either he keeps on sliding inside, involving all of his teammates in the process and making it a team game or he takes those, force both PG and Melo in some annoying iso ball at times and completely rendering Adams useless and hope he singlehandedly win it for the team while zoning out the rest of his teammates. Simply put, the paramount KEY to their offense is Russell Westbrook. And oh, Melo playing ball stopper.

I don't worry much about their bench come playoffs. If Donovan learns how to effectively stagger the minutes of PG, Melo, Adams & Westbrook with at least 2-3 of them on the floor in a naturally tight player rotation series, they'll be fine.

Now about their current standing, as close as they are to falling out of the Top 8, they're also just 2 loss behind the 3rd seed Spurs and among all 8 teams currently ranked 3-10 battling for 6 spots in the playoffs, despite their inconsistencies, I would argue they're the least likely to drop out. Like they're having a bad stretch while the other 5-6 teams are kicking their asses off to keep in step. I wonder how that goes if there's a turnaround because there will be one in the remaining 25 games. As long as they keep it within 3rd-6th, they'll move on to the second round, book it. It should be monumental though if a team comprising a Westbrook, a Melo and a PG13 bows out of the postseason in round 1.

[Black Mage]

Maybe if Russ learned how to shoot efficiently. Under 30% from 3 on 4.4 attempts a game?

Russ really is the answer to the question... what would Allen Iverson look like if he were 3 inches taller.