Last season, Kevin Durant only played 27 games for the Thunder. Russell Westbrook had an outstanding season, doing everything he could to carry OKC back to the playoffs in the extremely competitive Western Conference. But his effort just wasn’t enough, as the Thunder finished 45-37, tying the New Orleans Pelicans for the 8th seed, but losing out on the tiebreaker, sending Oklahoma City back to the lottery for the first time since 2010.
Fast forward to this season, and besides the coaching change, firing Scott Brooks and replacing him with Billy Donovan, the Thunder look very similar to last year. All major stars and rotation players from the end of last season returned, and the only player that had at least a minor role in the team last year who is gone is Jeremy Lamb, who is having a coming-out season in Charlotte.
And despite the similarities this season, the Thunder find themselves 17-9 and comfortably in the, now-weakened, Western Conference playoffs, currently holding onto the third seed. So what’s changed? Has Billy Donovan brought the team out of its shell?
No, not really. The key is that Kevin Durant is back healthy (besides his two-week absence with a hamstring injury). Last season, the Thunder went 19-9 in the 27 games Durant played. Without him, they went 26-28. As dominant as Westbrook has been last season and this one, he just hasn’t been able to carry OKC the way KD can. Even back in the 2013-14 season when Westbrook missed 35 games, Oklahoma City went 24-11. Durant is one of the top-three players in the NBA, and his return has vaulted OKC back to where they belong in the Western Conference hierarchy.
The question is, how far can they go? Scott Brooks was fired because OKC wanted to move away from their isolation-heavy offenses that worked as well as it did for anyone in the league since they had two world-class players running those isos in the regular season, but in the late rounds of the playoffs, it was less effective.
Under Donovan, isolations have decreased, as neither Durant or Westbrook are in the top twenty players in isolation frequency. But the pair still have usage rates that no one else on the roster even comes close too.
And the ball movement is still low for the Thunder. Westbrook averages 9.5 assists, and Durant 4.2, but beyond that no one else is significantly contributing in the assists category, relying on the two stars to produce the offense a little too much.
OKC also remains a dominant team on the offensive boards, just like they were last year, as the work of Enes Kanter and Serge Ibaka has led them to leading the league in ORB percentage.
The Oklahoma City defense isn’t too bad either, as they are 12th in the league with a defensive rating of 103.2, via basketball-reference.com. But there are concerns on that end going forward as well. Westbrook, Durant, and Ibaka all remain as high-level defensive weapons, but they will have some difficult choices with their role players going forward. Enes Kanter is as bad of a defensive sieve as there is. The defensive rating when Kanter is on the floor is 103.8. When he is off the court, the rating is 97.1, a 6.7 difference. Other role players also have bad on/off split defensive ratings, as DJ Augustin, Dion Waiters and Anthony Morrow also hurt the team defense when they step on the court. OKC is one of the worst teams in the league in defending three-pointers, and a big part of that is these players not being able to close out on their defensive rotations in a league where the pick-and-roll continues to gain importance in the modern NBA offense. Other players like Steven Adams and Andre Roberson significantly help the defense when they are on the court, but those two are certainly not big contributors on the offensive end.
Having multiple role players that are either only positives on offense or positives on defense puts the Thunder in a predicament. Either sacrifice having offensive versatility and work with your defensive role players more, or make themselves harder to defend by playing with a more diversified offensive repertoire.
The Thunder will have time to figure out where they are going, as the season is still relatively young, but it’s safe to say that the return of Kevin Durant means we won’t be writing about the Oklahoma City Thunder here much longer.
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