2018-2019 OKC Thunder Regular Season Pt 1: A Renewed Hope

[Pillendreher]

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This is something George simply didn't do last year. It is so important for us that he is able to do that this season and doesn't get lost in endless dribbling like he did last year.

[spearsy23]

[tweet]108074276285

This is something George simply didn't do last year. It is so important for us that he is able to do that this season and doesn't get lost in endless dribbling like he did last year.

I agree he didn't do it last year, but it wasn't the dribbling, he would've been more than happy to take that off balance jumper with the defender on his hip.

[getrichordie]

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[getrichordie]

This is definitely worth watching LOL

https://streamable.com/3zgsj


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[Pillendreher]

Almost at the halfway point and we have managed to keep opposing teams below their regular season output in all but 5 games. On average, we have kept teams 7.1 points per 100 possessions below their regular season offensive output.

[Pillendreher]

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NetRtG after the first 38 games:

11/12: +6.1
12/13: +9.9
13/14: +7.1
15/16: +7.6
17/18: +4.3
18/19: +6.2

[acheema0]

In his last 11 games, Dennis is putting up a 12/4/3 on 36/21/64

[Old Man Game]

Starting to get the feeling we'll never know what happened to Alex and he'll just be waived at some point.

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[Bergmaniac]

Currently you don't have a single guard with TS% better than 51% (Abrines), and Schroder and Westbrook are both below 50% (well below in Russ' case) and take a huge number of shots. You also have only 2 rotation players shooting over 32.5% from 3. Pretty amazing that your record is as good as it is.

[Pillendreher]

Currently you don't have a single guard with TS% better than 51% (Abrines), and Schroder and Westbrook are both below 50% (well below in Russ' case) and take a huge number of shots. You also have only 2 rotation players shooting over 32.5% from 3. Pretty amazing that your record is as good as it is.

Defense. And for whatever reason, the offense has been great with our best guys on. If you take the starters and add the minutes Schröder has played with them, we have scored at a better rate than the Warriors with their Big 4 on the court: 116.8 ORtG (1247 possessions) vs 115.1 ORtG (979 possessions).

[Bergmaniac]

That seems way too high, how are you 20th in ORTG if your two most used lineups are so good offensively?

[Pillendreher]

That seems way too high, how are you 20th in ORTG if your two most used lineups are so good offensively?

I did the math after the 2nd game vs Dallas on NYE:

[Bergmaniac]

What does "non-bench" mean here?

[Pillendreher]

What does "non-bench" mean here?

Every possession that the "bench" (I think I used Schröder-Noel since that encompasses all relevant bench minutes according to Donovan's rotations) unit is not on the floor for, i.e. you have the bench on one side and the rest of all the possessions on the other.

[slick_watts]

miky berra made a suggestion that fast pace and great defense is unusual so i decided to look at how much. this chart is the top 75 defenses of all time by points allowed per 100 possessions relative to league average. the vertical axis is relative defense, the horizontal axis is relative pace. you can see that the 2018-19 thunder are currently a major outlier among these best defenses.

[ThunderBolt]

miky berra made a suggestion that fast pace and great defense is unusual so i decided to look at how much. this chart is the top 75 defenses of all time by points allowed per 100 possessions relative to league average. the vertical axis is relative defense, the horizontal axis is relative pace. you can see that the 2018-19 thunder are currently a major outlier among these best defenses.

And yet the other outlier is Milwaukee this year as well as a recent version of GS. Are we really an outlier or is there something about the current game that makes this more of a viable style of play?

[slick_watts]

miky berra made a suggestion that fast pace and great defense is unusual so i decided to look at how much. this chart is the top 75 defenses of all time by points allowed per 100 possessions relative to league average. the vertical axis is relative defense, the horizontal axis is relative pace. you can see that the 2018-19 thunder are currently a major outlier among these best defenses.

And yet the other outlier is Milwaukee this year as well as a recent version of GS. Are we really an outlier or is there something about the current game that makes this more of a viable style of play?

milwaukee and the warriors are in the dataset and outliers on pace but their defenses are nowhere near as good as ours. among the top 25 defenses all have lower pace than league average except us and the 2008 magic which is barely above and 2006-07 bulls. unless our defense takes a step back to milwaukee range we will remain outliers.

[getrichordie]

miky berra made a suggestion that fast pace and great defense is unusual so i decided to look at how much. this chart is the top 75 defenses of all time by points allowed per 100 possessions relative to league average. the vertical axis is relative defense, the horizontal axis is relative pace. you can see that the 2018-19 thunder are currently a major outlier among these best defenses.

Excellent work. Our defense no doubt has been top notch. But I definitely expect a significant regression due to the amount of minutes Adams has played, mainly. There are several reasons to be concerned about this level of defense being sustainable... too bad Roberson had an avulsion fracture... because he could’ve probably stepped in later in the season and picked up the slack...


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[Pillendreher]

What does "non-bench" mean here?

Every possession that the "bench" (I think I used Schröder-Noel since that encompasses all relevant bench minutes according to Donovan's rotations) unit is not on the floor for, i.e. you have the bench on one side and the rest of all the possessions on the other.

I re-did the maths based on stats.nba.com's numbers now:

Schröder+Noel has a 96.6 ORtG during 17.4 % of our total possessions, which would rank 30th and then some on a team level. For the other 82.6 % of our possessions, our ORtG is therefore 110.2, which would rank 11th on a team level, so there's a discrepancy in the data. Looks like the data cleaningtheglass has classified as "garbage time" has been very unfavorable to our offensive output, which makes us look better if you remove it.

[slick_watts]

dennis schroder 25+ usage and < -2.0 BPM is in some mighty company the past five seasons.