3/5 | G64: Oklahoma City Thunder at Minnesota Timberwolves - 7PM CST

[NaturalThunder]

We give up 120+ or 125+ like it's free.

This defense sucks.


The spiral to a 6-8 seed continues.

[bondom34]

Haven't posted in a while. And said I wasn't going to but what's his name hasn't been around in a while.

Just one post and I'm only here for the panic. Have a good one all.

[Osirus89]

Portland refuses to take the 3rd seed. This team is begging for them to take it, but they keep turning down the offer.
Take the damn 3rd seed you mooks!

I had mixed feelings about PG playing and it looks like they were valid. He was just as rough as I expected, but at this point I don't know if he just had a legitimately bad game or if its his shoulder.
Just as troubling is the fact that the team has turned into one of those 80s era nuggets teams that just tries to outscore everyone, but sucks too much on offense to pull it off.

Russ and PG have performed some type of freaky friday which I don't know how to feel about that.
It wouldn't surprise me if we won against Portland or got blown out. Portland SHOULD crush this team currently, but they are so allergic to the third seed that they may still lose the game anyway.

Whatever... I'm watching the rest of this season just to see what happens, but I don't expect anything. This year is a wash without Dre anyway and Golden State is still intact at least for this season so w/e. Hopefully next season will be brighter.

[slick_watts]

Haven't posted in a while. And said I wasn't going to but what's his name hasn't been around in a while.

Just one post and I'm only here for the panic. Have a good one all.

stop being a weenie and rep your team, son! through thick and thin.

[bondom34]

Haven't posted in a while. And said I wasn't going to but what's his name hasn't been around in a while.

Just one post and I'm only here for the panic. Have a good one all.

stop being a weenie and rep your team, son! through thick and thin.

Said it so many times, I'm watching a bunch of teams. Not repping anything/one.

[Dadouv47]

I'm pissed but relax guys. We still have some time to figure things out. I was never an optimistic here (and got criticized many times for it) and I'm not an hardcore believer in our chances to make a deep run this year even when we won 9/10 games recently (read so many overreactions like ''We would sweep the Blazers easily'') and always thought it would be a very difficult first round match up but I also don't think we are that trash and so far behind Houston/Portland/Utah (maybe Houston would be impossible to beat without Dre defending on Harden).

We depend so much on our starters and mainly our 2 stars that we can play at almost an elite level or beyond trash. That's clearly not the right way to build a roster to win a championship but doesn't mean we are going to lose in first round either. We will need Playoff P or MVPG for sure because without him we can't score enough. We rely too much on him

Will probably be a coin flip against Portland or Utah (a bit more or less depending on who gets HCA) and a 30/70 against the Rockets.

[Dn4sty]

Adams 3 for 9 at FT line
Russ 3 for 7 at FT line

[Old Man Game]

I'm not pissed. We just aren't good at the moment. The good news is we can play better than this. There's nothing intrinsically wrong. They just have stopped playing D almost altogether. Eventually they'll snap out of it in time to lose in the first round in 6 games or maybe make the second round if they get a really favorable matchup in the first round.

[RalphSampsonJr]

Adams 3 for 9 at FT line
Russ 3 for 7 at FT line

Thats the least of the thinders worries! Defense is now non existant. Teams normally get better as the years goes on.. this team is back to where they were at the start of the season

[Pillendreher]

I know I'm going to sound like Pill, but they made every contested three and long two over the last 3-4 minutes of the half. I don't think they missed a shot the final 3-4 minutes, really. Some of them were open jumpers and easy shots at the rim, but they had several well-contested made jumper sprinkled in there as well.

No shame in agreeing with me. I know I'm repeating myself, but this is not that difficult:

1.They don't play defense.
2.Teams start making trash shots

The latter is a direct result of the former. Rose and Towns scored ~20 to 30 points on garbage shots. But we didn't even attempt to bother them. You can't expect guys to miss simply because they don't make every shot throughout the season. You have to make them miss. Yet, we do not even attempt to stop them. In fact, we "play defense" the worst way possible. It looks like the whole defensive approach is to put the opposing team in the best position possible and then pray that they miss:

-Who taught this team to double/trap the PnR ballhandler and give Towns 20 feet of completely unguarded space at the 3pt line?
-Who told them to switch guards onto bigmen without the bigman even being part of the play? It's like they're trying to force the opposing team to attack the mismatch. Pure insanity.
-Who told them to play this weird "zone" off the ball where they don't stick with their assignment, but instead just roam around inside the perimeter? I know it's so that they can get deflections and steals, but there has to be a purpose to it. If you're assigned to a wing standing in the corner on the weak side and the ball never makes it near you, you just can't float all the way to the paint without guarding anybody.
-Who told them to let guys just take shots after making everything all game long?

I - once again - agree with J. A. Sherman:

https://www.welcometoloudcity.com/2019/3/5/18252634/thunder-vs-timberwolves-score-2019-towns-westbrook

The problem(s) that welled up however are largely the same we’ve seen for the past 3 weeks, and a lot of it again is on Billy Donovan. He has not properly prepared his team on either side of the ball during this poor stretch, and yes, the team is playing a bad brand of basketball, but they aren’t even approaching the game with a semblance of an effective game plan. A few examples:

Steven Adams finished with only 6 shots on the night. Yes, Karl-Anthony Towns can be a handful in the post, but the team never made him leave that spot defensively. Without having to make Towns move around, they seldom could create easy scoring opportunities at the rim for Adams or anyone else.

Speaking of Towns, he scored 41 on 15-27 shooting, 26 of which came in the 2nd half. He got any shot he wanted whenever he wanted it, and the Thunder never gave him any different looks to make him think he had to do something otherwise. Yes, if you double-team him, other guys are open, but that’s why you develop a defensive strategy to know precisely where and when the doubles come, who is open, and how to rotate back.

Overall, the Thunder defense is perhaps the most perplexing issue in the NBA at this point (besides the whole Boston/Lakers high drama). I think we’ve all come to the safe conclusion that their early defensive prowess was largely circumstantial and they regressed to the mean, but they’re barely even mediocre at this point. They readily commit to switching on darn near everything, and not only do teams know it, they’re counting on it. Minny got a mismatch whenever they wanted with Towns, simply by putting him in the high pick and roll and letting the Thunder fall right back into a self-made snare.

Offensively, while 120 is a solid number, OKC never really made the Wolves work. Even as they created a fair number of free throws (managing to miss a woeful 13 of them), OKC never put the Wolves defense in a situation where they had to make decisions. Repeatedly it was quick sets and quick shots, and yes, 39% is a solid 3-point shooting number (off 46 attempts), there was barely anything else aside from Westbrook drives that were even attempted.

Where is the gameplan? Why do we look like we have no idea what to do on the court so often? Why are we making the same mistakes over and over and over again? This isn't an Adams problem - it's a team problem. We have guys just floating around on defense (Westbrook's priority at this point is to make a highlight play; if that's not possible, he's just waiting for the defensive rebound), we have guys sticking to the scheme and not being quick enough right now to cover for everybody (Adams can't trap the PnR ballhandler and run all the way back to Towns spotting up; it's just not possible), we have guys being taken out of games with insane regularity right now (With Ferguson, we're back to him getting **** by the refs every game because they're not allowing any sort of contact by him anymore) and the rest of the team is just all over the place with all kinds of defensive issues. It sure as hell doesn't help that we don't have a single defensive wing on the bench (thanks for that, Presti) and are suddenly throwing out Westbrook-Schröder-Nader lineups, which have to be among the worst defensive 1 to 3 lineups the NBA has ever seen.

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Maybe try something different then. if your whole defensive scheme is based on running around the floor like maniacs, not missing a single rotation because you're wide open if you do, you're just playing with fire.
It's total insanity that two years in a row, our defensive scheme goes up in flames and we do absolutely nothing about it but get killed defensively every game. Fun fact about the last two seasons though: We were bettere defensively last season after Roberson got hurt (110.6 DRtG) than this season since the first win vs Portland (113.6 DRtG). Let that sink in.

[Pillendreher]

To illustrate how completely garbage this team has been since the Portland win before the ASB: In the 8 games since then, they have led for a combined 41 minutes and 36 seconds:

2/14 @ NOP: 5:41 min
2/22 vs UTA: 21:16 min
2/23 vs SAC: 1:57 min
2/26 @ DEN: 6:52 min
2/28 vs PHI: 0:49 min
3/2 @ SAS: 0:29 min
3/3 vs MEM: 2:37 min
3/5 @ MIN: 1:55 min

That's not even a full game over an 8 game stretch and barely above 10 % of the total time played. And if you remove the Utah game from the sample, you get 20 minutes and 20 seconds over 7 games. If you just look at the last 4 games, you get a total of 5 minutes and 50 seconds. Those are not numbers for a team getting ready for a playoff push. Those are the numbers for a team that has been thoroughly outmatched.

[sleestak33]

Once again our supposedly great defensive center Adams gets absolutely torched by a mobile big who can shoot. Towns has 41 points in 30 minutes and yes I understand Adams wasn't on him for all of those points but he was for most of them. I still am just not understanding how Adams has ever been labelled as a good defender because he's not and he gets torched over and over by guys like Towns and nobody in the media ever tells it like it is. He simply can't guard anybody unless it's a low post scorer very close to the basket who isn't mobile. They're going to have to start playing Noel more because when you have one guy continuously getting scorched all game long you can't really mount a comeback because you're never getting consistent stops. Adams' defense is a big part of why this team is struggling.

[1bigfan13]

We give up 120+ or 125+ like it's free.

This defense sucks.


The spiral to a 6-8 seed continues.

Yep. I laugh whenever I hear commentators mention OKC as one of the top defenses in the NBA. The Thunder's defense was strong at the beginning of the year but it has been pretty bad for two months now.

When you're an inefficient offense coupled with being a poor defensive team, the results are what we've been seeing in recent weeks.

[1bigfan13]

Once again our supposedly great defensive center Adams gets absolutely torched by a mobile big who can shoot. Towns has 41 points in 30 minutes and yes I understand Adams wasn't on him for all of those points but he was for most of them. I still am just not understanding how Adams has ever been labelled as a good defender because he's not and he gets torched over and over by guys like Towns and nobody in the media ever tells it like it is. He simply can't guard anybody unless it's a low post scorer very close to the basket who isn't mobile. They're going to have to start playing Noel more because when you have one guy continuously getting scorched all game long you can't really mount a comeback because you're never getting consistent stops. Adams' defense is a big part of why this team is struggling.

I'd look to trade him but he has such a bad contract that I don't think OKC would be able to find a trade partner. Regardless of that, it would be wise of Presti to start looking for other options at Center for all the reasons you laid out. He's too much of a liability vs modern day big men. 20 years ago he'd fit right in and would be a tremendous asset, but in today's NBA he's a bit of a dinosaur.

[slick_watts]

Once again our supposedly great defensive center Adams gets absolutely torched by a mobile big who can shoot. Towns has 41 points in 30 minutes and yes I understand Adams wasn't on him for all of those points but he was for most of them. I still am just not understanding how Adams has ever been labelled as a good defender because he's not and he gets torched over and over by guys like Towns and nobody in the media ever tells it like it is. He simply can't guard anybody unless it's a low post scorer very close to the basket who isn't mobile. They're going to have to start playing Noel more because when you have one guy continuously getting scorched all game long you can't really mount a comeback because you're never getting consistent stops. Adams' defense is a big part of why this team is struggling.

I'd look to trade him but he has such a bad contract that I don't think OKC would be able to find a trade partner. Regardless of that, it would be wise of Presti to start looking for other options at Center for all the reasons you laid out. He's too much of a liability vs modern day big men. 20 years ago he'd fit right in and would be a tremendous asset, but in today's NBA he's a bit of a dinosaur.

oh boy

[1bigfan13]

oh boy

Do you think we're overreacting?

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[Pillendreher]

oh boy

Do you think we're overreacting?

Read on Twitter

I think there's two sides to this: On the one hand, Adams simply hasn't been as good defensively lately on top of simply always having troubles with shooting bigs (for whatever reason, he always is a step late on them). On the other hand, I think one could and should treat this as a sort of symptom, indicating that there is something wrong with how we defend as a team, ie the opposing Center often times being the one benefitting from those struggles.

[Pillendreher]

These two possessions are showing the current state of our defense imo:

1)



First off, Westbrook is just floating around. He's neither defending nor helping anybody. Then you get Grant running around like a madman, neither sticking with anybody nor providing any sort of other protection. In addition to that, George is late getting to his man, then gets beat by him without putting up much of a contest. And as the last guy standing, Adams decides to help on Wiggins while Grant runs away from Wiggins and Westbrook just stands around watching the play which leaves Towns wide open. Whose fault is this basket?

2)



Ferg and Adams defend the PnR. Ferg recovers to his man, but Adams is a little slow getting back to Towns. George is in the vecinity, but chooses not to help. It's just too easy. You can't load up on the ballhandler and then forget about the bigman as a shooting threat. If you can't get over the screen fast enugh, go under it and live with Jeff Teague trying to be Lillard or Curry.

[1bigfan13]

I think there's two sides to this: On the one hand, Adams simply hasn't been as good defensively lately on top of simply always having troubles with shooting bigs (for whatever reason, he always is a step late on them). On the other hand, I think one could and should treat this as a sort of symptom, indicating that there is something wrong with how we defend as a team, ie the opposing Center often times being the one benefitting from those struggles.

Valid points.

This organization really does need a change of direction. Steven Adams in particular could possibly benefit from a regime change, because as it stands now, he's a massive disappointment especially when you consider the return we're getting for his $24 million dollar salary.

I've been advocating for a little over a month now for OKC to ditch their current defensive strategy and stop with all the switching. It's not working yet they continue to roll out the same strategy night after night.

[Pillendreher]

I think there's two sides to this: On the one hand, Adams simply hasn't been as good defensively lately on top of simply always having troubles with shooting bigs (for whatever reason, he always is a step late on them). On the other hand, I think one could and should treat this as a sort of symptom, indicating that there is something wrong with how we defend as a team, ie the opposing Center often times being the one benefitting from those struggles.

Valid points.

This organization really does need a change of direction. Steven Adams in particular could possibly benefit from a regime change, because as it stands now, he's a massive disappointment especially when you consider the return we're getting for his $24 million dollar salary.

One of my secret takes about the Thunder is that they prefere to restrict role players to certain roles that allow their stars to not do the little things. Maybe Adams would be better if he wasn't both the first and last line of defense at the same time because a certain somebody just never sticks with his man in a PnR.

I've been advocating for a little over a month now for OKC to ditch their current defensive strategy and stop with all the switching. It's not working yet they continue to roll out the same strategy night after night.

They're not even switching all that much as far as I can tell. I think it's just a general issue of defending as a team. They very rarely look like they defend as a unit these days.