Its been the same problem all year. While offense has come naturally for the Oklahoma City Thunder, defense has been an incessant stain on their championship dreams. This became abundantly clear against a dominant San Antonio Spurs side which made the Thunder look like schoolboys on the night. Oklahoma City dropped the ball in the first game of what was meant to be a slugfest between two playoff heavyweights. And it still can be a tightly contested battle; it shouldn’t matter whether a team gets beaten by 1 or 32 in any game during a series. But if the first game is anything to go by, the Thunder have some serious issues they need to address as soon as possible. If Oklahoma City has a problem, it’s their defensive consistency.
What was most glaringly obvious was the pick and roll defense. Too many times the Thunder looked confused when San Antonio ran the pick, leaving good shooters like Leonard, Aldridge and West to get clean looks at the basket. Aldridge had his highest scoring night of the playoffs, scoring 38 points in 30 minutes and finding himself left alone at the elbow six times off of screens for his 17 made shots. Both Steven Adams and Serge Ibaka are good individual defenders in their own right, but seemed to lack communication and left Aldridge open for too many clean jumpers. When he wasn’t open, Aldridge still managed to bully Ibaka down on the low block, which is rarely the case for someone who is incredibly strong.
It seemed all the Thunder players were passive. Westbrook especially looked flustered and this was most evident when he threw down a half-hearted dunk on a break away steal. This is from a man who usually looks like he wants to shatter the backboard whenever he goes up. With some credit, having the defensive player of the year Kawhi Leonard guard you might throw anybody off their game. But this lethargic attitude was contagious, and it led to the Spurs scoring a playoff record of 43 points in the first quarter. At the half, Oklahoma City were 33 points down, which has been the biggest half-time deficit by any team in the playoffs to this point. For the Spurs, they were only 1 point from tying their franchise record for the most amount of points scored in the first half during playoffs.
The Thunder were rattled from the get-go; epitomized perhaps most by Leonard’s blow-by dunk on the opening possession. Oklahoma City never recovered after a demoralizing first quarter and lacked the discipline to match the pragmatic and consistent game plan of the Spurs who rhythmically went through their offensive sets. The Thunder were regularly caught in mismatches and could only stand and watch as their team continued getting lazier and more desperate as the game drew on. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, two offensive superstars with tremendous individual ability, were forced to sit the entire fourth quarter and watch their team be dismantled from the bench.
It would seem that San Antonio will be too hard of a place for the Thunder to win at. Not only have the Spurs managed to go 40-1 at home this season, but Oklahoma have typically struggled at the AT&T Center. Indeed, the Thunder have only managed to win one in six games at San Antonio during the postseason; but even that game was highly competitive right until the end. Of those losses, the average margin was 25.1 points in favor of the Spurs. The Thunder have typically failed to match the discipline and cohesion of a well-drilled San Antonio side who ruthlessly punish even the slightest errors. Even Durant acknowledged the importance of consistency, saying after the game that “This game . . . is about who’s smarter, who’s more disciplined and who takes more advantage of the other teams mistakes.”
So it would be safe to say that OKC face an uphill battle throughout the rest of the series. Least of all, the blowout victory allowed the Spurs to rest Kawhi Leonard for an extended period. That’s scary considering that Leonard managed to score 25 points in 22 minutes. Some other details we noticed from that game is that Aldridge has become quite apt at finishing with his left hand since dislocating his fingers. After a relatively poor series against Memphis, LaMarcus Aldridge led all scorers. The Spurs’ team work and ball movement was especially impressive; all 13 Spurs on the active roster scored. In the first quarter alone, San Antonio managed 13 assists with only one turnover. It will be interesting to see how Billy Donovan and his personnel respond in Game 2.
