1bigfan13 wrote:Do you honestly think this team playing the brand of basketball they're currently playing would have won 37 games before the All-Star break? I certainly don't.
Yes. They were playing the same brand of basketball. OKC shot 46.2% from the field before the break and are 43% since. Their 3pt percentage is down from 36.3% to 30.6%. The Thunder are taking 2 more shots a game since the all-star break while scoring 5.6 less points a game. Their opponents are taking 0.2 more shots per game since the break and scoring 2.9 more points per game. Better teams score more efficiently and cause their opponent to score less efficiently. You can sum up OKC's issues with those two things. The playing down to their competition has been a common theme during the Donovan era so them losing to lottery teams missing players isn't something unique to this years' Thunder team.
The Thunder are pretty much doing what they did all year. They just had a natural regression to the mean. Russ has almost regressed back to his career average from the field as a whole and from 3 for the season. Schroder regressed back near his career average from 3. PG has regressed to his career average from 3. Grant hasn't shown any regression implying that his gains from 3 are legitimate. Just to clarify regression to the mean does not always indicate a negative, hence Russ improved his shooting to regress to the mean. It simply means that established players generally are who they are and that an outlier will correct itself.
