5/2/2023 0 Comments Billy donovan teams coached![]() There’s a logic to that- Abrines is no great shakes at defense, but he hits enough 3’s and spaces the floor enough to improve the offense over what Roberson gave. When Abrines played with the starters, the offense jumped to 116.4, a very high mark- enough to at least somewhat offset the defense cratering to 111.0. The upshot of that is the team went from outscoring opponents by over 14 points per 100 possessions to less than 1 point with Brewer. With Roberson, however, the Thunder posted an elite defensive rating of 96.2, while with Brewer they were a mediocre 109.9. The lineup of Brewer and the other 4 starters finished the regular season with an offensive rating of 110.8, virtually unchanged from the original starting 5 (110.7). Brewer was never the defender Andre Roberson is even in his prime, but he also didn’t have the skills to juice OKC’s offense. There’s something to be said for veteran leadership and a guy who makes the right plays - not to mention one who has a long history with Donovan - but beyond that, Brewer’s fit never made much sense (shades of Derek Fisher). He’d spent the last two seasons in a limited, off the bench role with the Rockets and then the Lakers, but OKC inserted him into the starting lineup and gave him 28 minutes a night after acquiring him in the buyout market. Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Imagesīrewer’s usage on the team was always a bit baffling to me. Abrines and Grant are role players, both young and with legitimate flaws, but they are far better suited than the men who were starting over them- Corey Brewer and Carmelo Anthony. The reason this lineup worked was because it featured OKC’s 3 best players- Westbrook George and Adams- along with two young, athletic guys, one of whom (Abrines) can hit 3’s, one (Grant) who is a reliable defender across positions, and both of whom can credibly switch on defense and at least not get blown by. The unit then ripped off a major comeback, saving OKC’s season.for exactly one game, before the team was eliminated in a game 6 that featured little of this lineup. Instead, the group didn’t see major minutes until the team had their collective backs against the wall and were facing elimination in game 5 of the playoffs. But their success in limited minutes should have led to them getting more run or, if Donovan knew what he had and planned to use them as a secret weapon, he should have been more ready to use them. Would that number have gone down if they’d played more minutes? Of course - no one is that efficient. They posted an unreal net rating of +31.9 in the regular season, per Cleaning the Glass. I have harped on this repeatedly, but the best 5 man unit the Thunder had once Roberson got hurt was Westbrook, Alex Abrines, Paul George, Jerami Grant, and Steven Adams. That speaks to one of Donovan’s biggest failures - despite his reputation as a “tinkerer” who likes to experiment with lots of lineups, the most successful units the Thunder displayed got far fewer minutes than they should have. The team struggled to figure out how to replace him for a month, and the lineup they settled on - Corey Brewer starting in his place - never even approximated the success of the original lineup. Roberson was at most the 4th most important player on the Thunder. And of course, it isn’t his fault that Andre Roberson got hurt.īut injuries happen to every team. The Thunder turned it around after that, and Donovan deserves some of the credit for the elite level they played at in December and January. ![]() ![]() That, combined with some truly terrible late game luck (the Thunder lost one game when Andrew Wiggins, the $146 million dollar man, hit a 35 foot bank shot 3 pointer despite not calling “bank’s open” first, and lost another when a referee missed the Greek Freak stepping out of bounds right in front of him) led to the Thunder starting 8-12 despite having the point differential of a much better team. It takes time for guys to learn how to play together, especially 3 guys as ball-dominant as Russell Westbrook, Paul George, and Carmelo Anthony. That said, what we can judge from the outside is how successful a team is, and the Thunder fell well short of where preseason expectations placed them. It’s hard to judge how successful a coach is at that even from inside an organization, and nearly impossible from outside. Coaches manage relationships between players, coaches decide what to emphasize in practice, coaches work on developing young players, and coaches ‘coach’ other coaches. There’s a lot to coaching that fans, reporters and analysts don’t see and will never see. A caveat, before we dive into OKC’s controversial head coach. ![]()
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