The third time's the charm - First Round Series vs Portland

[Dadouv47]

Looks like "can't play Kanter" doesn't really hold true. 20 points and 18 rebounds (7 offensive) in 34 minutes and he outplayed Adams. Like I said the entire time he was here in OKC...the guy was massively underplayed. This game is the Thunder season in a nutshell. The continued bizarre insistence on shooting 3s when they suck at it (they were 5-33) bit them in the ass again and the continued starting of an incompetent offensive shooting guard (16 minutes 3 points for Ferguson) plus a huge lack of respect for shot selection costs them another loss. At least their defense got better after the 1st qtr. where they gave up 39 points. That's about the only bright spot.

Not true. Don’t know if u watched the game or only individual stats.
Kanter had a GREAT offensive impact but Adams was abusing him on the other hand. Portland deserves a lot of credit from playing great interior defense as a team to compensate from Kanter bad defense.
Nothing new that Kanter is a great offensive Center and a terrible defender.

[Bergmaniac]

PG is absolutely trash from range but kept chucking anyway. Lets blame Schroder for that.

PG was 4/15 from 3 while playing hurt, Schroder was 0/7 while 100% healthy. And Schroder couldn't score inside against the worst rim protector combo in the league.

[Pillendreher]

PG is absolutely trash from range but kept chucking anyway. Lets blame Schroder for that.

PG was 4/15 from 3 while playing hurt, Schroder was 0/7 while 100% healthy. And Schroder couldn't score inside against the worst rim protector combo in the league.

Playoff Schröder is about to turn that corner.

[Dadouv47]

PG is absolutely trash from range but kept chucking anyway. Lets blame Schroder for that.

PG was 4/15 from 3 while playing hurt, Schroder was 0/7 while 100% healthy. And Schroder couldn't score inside against the worst rim protector combo in the league.

Playoff Schröder is about to turn that corner.

Playoff P and Playoff Schroeder are a fraude. Playoff Dion was a thing!

[Jstock12]

Looks like "can't play Kanter" doesn't really hold true. 20 points and 18 rebounds (7 offensive) in 34 minutes and he outplayed Adams. Like I said the entire time he was here in OKC...the guy was massively underplayed. This game is the Thunder season in a nutshell. The continued bizarre insistence on shooting 3s when they suck at it (they were 5-33) bit them in the ass again and the continued starting of an incompetent offensive shooting guard (16 minutes 3 points for Ferguson) plus a huge lack of respect for shot selection costs them another loss. At least their defense got better after the 1st qtr. where they gave up 39 points. That's about the only bright spot.

Agreed, Portland won by 5 points, but Kanter was +15. That's a ridiculous impact for a single player. Portland, as a team, was -10 without him on the court.

[Pillendreher]

stats.nba.com defensive shot quality data:

Overall FG% by OKC: 39.8 %
Expected FG% by OKC: 46.6 %

3P% by OKC: 15.2 %
Expected 3P% by OKC: 35.7 %

2P% by OKC: 53.3 %
Expected 2P% by OKC: 52.0 %

---------------------------------------------

Matchup data by stats.nba.com:

Westbrook guarded by Lillard: 109.8 ORtG for the Thunder (56 Possessions)
George guarded by Aminu: 129.4 ORtG for the Thunder (34 Possessions)
George guarded by Harkless: 91.3 ORtG for the Thunder (23 Possessions)
Adams guarded by Kanter: 93.1 ORtG for the Thunder (58 Possessions)
Lillard guarded by Westbrook: 88.9 ORtG for the Trail Blazers (45 Possessions)
Lillard guarded by Schröder: 64.3 ORtG for the Trail Blazers (14 Possessions)
McCollum guarded by Schröder: 92.1 ORtG for the Trail Blazers (38 Possessions)
McCollum guarded by Ferguson: 140.0 ORtG for the Trail Blazers (20 Possessions)
Kanter guarded by Adams: 110.1 ORtG for the Trail Blazers (59 possessions)

[Pillendreher]

Looks like "can't play Kanter" doesn't really hold true. 20 points and 18 rebounds (7 offensive) in 34 minutes and he outplayed Adams. Like I said the entire time he was here in OKC...the guy was massively underplayed. This game is the Thunder season in a nutshell. The continued bizarre insistence on shooting 3s when they suck at it (they were 5-33) bit them in the ass again and the continued starting of an incompetent offensive shooting guard (16 minutes 3 points for Ferguson) plus a huge lack of respect for shot selection costs them another loss. At least their defense got better after the 1st qtr. where they gave up 39 points. That's about the only bright spot.

Agreed, Portland won by 5 points, but Kanter was +15. That's a ridiculous impact for a single player. Portland, as a team, was -10 without him on the court.

+/- doesn't equal impact. Especially not in a single game.

[slick_watts]

Read on Twitter

?s=19

we did what i suspected we'd do-- paid a lot less attention to kanter than we usually do nurkic. i also thought the defense was mostly good.

the problem is portland is defending our pnr just like utah did. kanter is a far cry from gobert but we're going to have to make threes at a much better rate for the offense to work.

They tried to defend it that way but actually couldn't do it. Lillard has no chance staying in front of Westbrook and Kanter could drop all the way back to Canada but it still wouldn't matter.

i mean, yeah. adams was more productive in the pnr than he would be normally v. utah or a team not playing kanter in the middle but we still have to make the shots we generate out of this if we're going to produce offense consistently.

[slick_watts]

is this kanter narrative for real? you guys remember the previous season when kanter played all those minutes against san antonio and we beat a 10+ srs team? kanter sucks, but it's not like we haven't played him in a playoff series and won. portland is much worse when he is in the game this season. he's the same defensive poison he has been his whole career, one playoff game against a below league average offense (us) notwithstanding.

[Pillendreher]

is this kanter narrative for real? you guys remember the previous season when kanter played all those minutes against san antonio and we beat a 10+ srs team? kanter sucks, but it's not like we haven't played him in a playoff series and won. portland is much worse when he is in the game this season. he's the same defensive poison he has been his whole career, one playoff game against a below league average offense (us) notwithstanding.

Yes. Didn't you notice ESPN pushing it all game long? They didn't show the possessions we destroyed him and Lillard in the Pick and Roll, but a couple of times where did what he has always done, ie grabbing stuff close to the basket and converting that at a high rate.

[slick_watts]

is this kanter narrative for real? you guys remember the previous season when kanter played all those minutes against san antonio and we beat a 10+ srs team? kanter sucks, but it's not like we haven't played him in a playoff series and won. portland is much worse when he is in the game this season. he's the same defensive poison he has been his whole career, one playoff game against a below league average offense (us) notwithstanding.

Yes. Didn't you notice ESPN pushing it all game long? They didn't show the possessions we destroyed him and Lillard in the Pick and Roll, but a couple of times where did what he has always done, ie grabbing stuff close to the basket and converting that at a high rate.

we won orb and tov in the game. if we shoot even sort of well, even for us, we win. kanter's good at getting those counting stats.

[Pillendreher]

kanter's good at getting those counting stats.

Maybe that's why he likes Westbrook so much.

[Dadouv47]

is this kanter narrative for real? you guys remember the previous season when kanter played all those minutes against san antonio and we beat a 10+ srs team? kanter sucks, but it's not like we haven't played him in a playoff series and won. portland is much worse when he is in the game this season. he's the same defensive poison he has been his whole career, one playoff game against a below league average offense (us) notwithstanding.

Yes. Didn't you notice ESPN pushing it all game long? They didn't show the possessions we destroyed him and Lillard in the Pick and Roll, but a couple of times where did what he has always done, ie grabbing stuff close to the basket and converting that at a high rate.

It's all about match up when it comes to Kanter. But the ESPN/casual narrative is beyond stupid. Kanter was getting killed early in the game. Portland made a great defensive adjustment though (was very difficult to score from the inside). Obviously it helped them to focus on interior defense when the opponent can't make a 3. If we were shooting the 3 even at 30% Kanter would have been exposed.

The only really positive impact Kanter provides for Portland is his offensive rebound skill / 2nd chance points for Portland

[Dadouv47]

Oh, and Kanter was beasting against San Antonio in 2016 but he was playing WITH Adams for the most part

[Dadouv47]

I really don't think Kanter scoring 20 points should be a big concern. When it comes to defense we need some good team defense (we did it during 3 quarters).
The key factor for me is defending well on CJ (because Lillard will make some crazy shots anyway and Westbrook is able to defend relatively well on him). When it comes to Cj, he was always open or killing Schroeder/Ferguson in 1vs1 (and he had a bad shooting night, could be way worse when he's hot)

[Andre Roberstan]

He's not. When he's in the game we've been able to attack him offensively and either score or, at the very least, generate a good look.

So you're not watching, okay

I am. I'm just not am impressionable idiot.

This thread got chippier than I'd like. Pille, you know better. Don't go after people.

Also will you guys lay off the visitors?

[Jstock12]

So you're not watching, okay

I am. I'm just not am impressionable idiot.

This thread got chippier than I'd like. Pille, you know better. Don't go after people.

Also will you guys lay off the visitors?

[slick_watts]

So you're not watching, okay

I am. I'm just not am impressionable idiot.

This thread got chippier than I'd like. Pille, you know better. Don't go after people.

Also will you guys lay off the visitors?

the discord chat has made him feral.

[SecondTake]

Looks like "can't play Kanter" doesn't really hold true. 20 points and 18 rebounds (7 offensive) in 34 minutes and he outplayed Adams. Like I said the entire time he was here in OKC...the guy was massively underplayed. This game is the Thunder season in a nutshell. The continued bizarre insistence on shooting 3s when they suck at it (they were 5-33) bit them in the ass again and the continued starting of an incompetent offensive shooting guard (16 minutes 3 points for Ferguson) plus a huge lack of respect for shot selection costs them another loss. At least their defense got better after the 1st qtr. where they gave up 39 points. That's about the only bright spot.

Seems like every big we trade away or release ends up putting up big numbers somewhere else.

[SecondTake]

Looks like "can't play Kanter" doesn't really hold true. 20 points and 18 rebounds (7 offensive) in 34 minutes and he outplayed Adams. Like I said the entire time he was here in OKC...the guy was massively underplayed. This game is the Thunder season in a nutshell. The continued bizarre insistence on shooting 3s when they suck at it (they were 5-33) bit them in the ass again and the continued starting of an incompetent offensive shooting guard (16 minutes 3 points for Ferguson) plus a huge lack of respect for shot selection costs them another loss. At least their defense got better after the 1st qtr. where they gave up 39 points. That's about the only bright spot.

Not true. Don’t know if u watched the game or only individual stats.
Kanter had a GREAT offensive impact but Adams was abusing him on the other hand. Portland deserves a lot of credit from playing great interior defense as a team to compensate from Kanter bad defense.
Nothing new that Kanter is a great offensive Center and a terrible defender.

17 points isn't really abuse. Maybe if he paired that with near double digit offensive rebounds like Kanter did, I'd call it abuse. But really, Adams just scored a few more points than usual on a few more shots than usual while Kanter kept scoring on him and taking his boards as if Adams wasnt even there. At the top of Adams job description is rebounding. You cant let the opposing center eat up almost every offensive rebound available on the court. Especially if he's called Kanter.