Oklahoma City Thunder Regular Season Thread: Part IV

[spearsy23]

Man, hasn't been the story all year long? It's not luck. It's a trend. Our perimeter defense is terrible. It starts with Durant. Durant is being so lazy on defense. He sets the precedent. This isn't on Donovan. People always blame the head of the snake but Donovan can't MAKE Durant lead his team and play defense.


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Donovan could at least try to help by playing his best perimeter defender in 4th quarters.

Pick your poison. Choose Roberson and decrease spacing for your shooters and close lanes for your drivers. Choose to sit Roberson and lose defense and put the onus on Waiters who has been playing good defense and can hit the 3 better than Roberson and open up things more.


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Dion is no more of an offensive threat than Roberson in 80% of games, and his defense is nowhere near good. Roberson is just flat better and the team is better with him on the floor.

[bondom34]

After Saturday night we'll be losers of 4 of 5 and in a dogfight with the Clippers for the 3-seed.

Another week and they'll lose to them to give it up.

[spearsy23]

Okay, we've been crap the last 10 games or so. I think we're back to accepting we're just an above average team. Hopefully some big changes not involving KD are made in the offseason.

[spearsy23]

Oh, and we once again saw that KD isn't that effective running the offense. If Donovan wants to have one of them on the court to start the 4th (especially with Kanter) it needs to be Russ.

[bondom34]

There's zero effort on defense by anyone other than Robes and Adams. And the reward? Here's the bench.

[spearsy23]

There's zero effort on defense by anyone other than Robes and Adams. And the reward? Here's the bench.

That's not quite fair, Singler was scrambling around like a chicken with his head cut off and Dion was doing his usual 'I'm trying really hard but letting you score anyway' defense. I already miss Cam's token backcourt pressure.

[bondom34]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ErikHorneOK/status/703066390832422913[/tweet]

[spearsy23]

Is only pointz

[Old Man Game]

THIS. DUMB. ORGANIZATION.

"Hey we traded for a new guard. Quick, bench that promising rookie and play him."

"But he looks washed up."

"I SAID PLAY HIM GODDAMMIT!"

"Can we at least bench Dion?"

"What are you this Rookie's father? BENCH HIM!"

[NaturalThunder]

THIS. DUMB. ORGANIZATION.

"Hey we traded for a new guard. Quick, bench that promising rookie and play him."

"But he looks washed up."

"I SAID PLAY HIM GODDAMMIT!"

You forgot the part about Waiters and Foye playing the same position but somehow it's Cam that's getting his minutes greatly reduced even though Waiters is worse than Payne and is actually one of the worst players in the NBA but he somehow still keeps getting 30 minutes a night. Seriously, though, whoever is behind the decision to play Waiters so much really shouldn't have a job in basketball if they can't see how terrible he is by now.

[Pillendreher]

Hopefully some big changes not involving KD are made in the offseason.

Yeah like kick Presti's sorry ass out off town. I've had it with this joke of an front office. Once again we get a terrible player only to play him no matter what. If we get Johnson, the only guy Presti would kill off is Roberson.

To quote thousands of parents:'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed'.

[Zagor]

Donovan's defense.
Presti fired Brooks for this guy? Buahahaha, basic part of basketball is defense. So I don't understand why coaching stuff just don't find new defensive system. This clearly is not working. And no, players are not guilty. TT had great defense with players like Boozer, Hinrich, Korver and Boogans in 2010/11 and with Bellineli,Robinson, Hinrich and Hamilton in 2012/13.

Donovan have Ibaka,Adams,Roberson,Westbrook and Durant as plus defenders or at least they can be great in defense. Nick as solid defensive player, Singler could be valuable and also Foye.

Billy Donovan is in company of Wittman and Scott as dumbest coach in the league.

[Cuban_Linx]

THIS. DUMB. ORGANIZATION.

"Hey we traded for a new guard. Quick, bench that promising rookie and play him."

"But he looks washed up."

"I SAID PLAY HIM GODDAMMIT!"

You forgot the part about Waiters and Foye playing the same position but somehow it's Cam that's getting his minutes greatly reduced even though Waiters is worse than Payne and is actually one of the worst players in the NBA but he somehow still keeps getting 30 minutes a night. Seriously, though, whoever is behind the decision to play Waiters so much really shouldn't have a job in basketball if they can't see how terrible he is by now.

I blame Presti. No matter the coach, there's always at least one token intangibles guy getting way too many minutes.

[Pillendreher]

I have a theory concerning all this 'Why is xy playing?!' ****. A guy on DT (I forgot his name) mentioned it a few weeks ago: Sunk cost fallacy.

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/174-sunk-cost-fallacy

Reasoning that further investment is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in the further investment.

If you look at all the guys getting an head-scratching-amount of minutes, Presti traded for almost every one of them:

-Perkins: Traded for in 2011; extended same year
-Fisher: Traded for in 2012; signed as a FA in 2013
-Butler: Signed as a FA in 2014
-Waiters: Traded for in 2015
-Kanter: Traded for in 2015
-Singler: Traded for in 2015; extended same year
-Foye: Traded for in 2016

Presti gave up something other than money (that's why it's ok to bench draftpicks and freeagents like Morrow and Payen) and he doesn't want to 'lose that investment', so he wants those guys to play, no matter what.

Now this certainly didn't work for Lamb, Augustin, Brewer, Hayward and Gomes, but it certainly works for McGary and Jones as well. That's a kind of pattern I see there.

[Dadouv47]

i think its too early to judge presti and donovan on foye's playing time. Dude just got traded and played 3 games for us. Need to wait a bit before blaming them for that.
Actually it's the first season that we gave so many shots to almost everyone on our roster (except Mc Gary), that we tried a lot of different line ups and rotations. We just didn't make the right moves last offseason and this year ( if there were better moves to make) and our roster is too bad right now.

[Pillendreher]

i think its too early to judge presti and donovan on foye's playing time. Dude just got traded and played 3 games for us. Need to wait a bit before blaming them for that.
Actually it's the first season that we gave so many shots to almost everyone on our roster (except Mc Gary), that we tried a lot of different line ups and rotations. We just didn't make the right moves last offseason and this year ( if there were better moves to make) and our roster is too bad right now.

'Giving shots to players' does not matter at all if the decisions based on that are this terrible. Payne, Morrow and Roberson are clearly better than Singler, Waiters and Foye, yet their minutes will suffer so that those other three asshats can get minutes.

Presti is always talking about 'synergy', about 'The Thunder way'. How do you think those guys mentioned above feel if they sit on the bench and they see those other imbeciles (Whatever Works reference) sucking out there on the floor. Payne, Roberson and Morrow always hustle. They fight and they leave everything on the floor for the betterment of the team; this shows in their impact on the team's performance.
A HC can't sit guys down because of their offense/defense/whatever and simulatiously leave other guys on the floor that are way worse at those things. How do you tell Morrow that Randy 'I'm Dion Waiters' brother' Foye should be out there instead of him? How do you tell Payne that he can't be out there because of those two jerks having to 'run the offense'. How do you tell McGary he can't play whereas Kanter can while being the worst Center defensively in the league?

There has to be a logic to decisions; otherwise it's just non-sensical jerking around by the coaching staff.

[Pillendreher]

Russ in February: 134 ORtG; 33.6 PER; 62.0 TS%; 11.8 TOV; 25.4/11.8/8.3
KD in February: 117.8 ORtG; 28.3 PER; 63.4 TS; 30.3/4.7/8.0

You can say what you want about their defensive effort, but these guys are keeping us afloat. Just goes to show what a travesty this roster is.

[Dadouv47]

Russ is phenomenal. He could very well be the MIP of the season. I was a fool thinking he had peaked last year....

[geterdone]

Another thing I hate about Singlar is if his sorry ass doesn't play he sits on the bench like a cry baby. Watch next time.

[Pillendreher]

Weren't you a Singler fan??