I only watched five or ten live minutes from the Thunder’s opening season loss to the world champion Warriors. The baseball post-season has been scintillating and the Thunder without Westbrook long-term could be unwatchable unless you’re Nick Gallo or a millennial Daily Thunder baby cub junior reporter. The millennials over there shouldn’t bristle. I made them famous in Sam Anderson’s book with the ‘Trekkie’ shout out in the book which is a NY Times bestseller.
To me though—the box score tells it all.
Smart teams find a way to win, dumb teams find a way not to win.
Period.
It’s all part of the Lombardi Doctrine from the previous post.
You only have to look at one stat and one stat only from Tuesday night’s opener to realize who was the smart team and who was the dumb team.
The stat would be team three point shooting.
The Golden State Warriors are perhaps the greatest three point shooting team in modern era. Steph, Klay, and Kevie make the Warriors historically lethal. On Tuesday night both Klay and Kevie had tough nights shooting the trey. Klay was 1-8 while Durant was 0-5. As a team the Warriors went 7-26 shooting the three but instead morphed their game a bit and quit jacking as many threes on an off shooting night. Smart teams find a way.
This Thunder team isn’t quite so bright. This is not a good shooting basketball team. They struggle shooting the three and have become a bad free throw shooting team since Durant’s departure to Oakland….even Westbrook’s free throw shooting has gone down.
On Tuesday, for a reason which I can’t grasp the Thunder chucked 37 threes and only made 10 of the shots.
What in the world are the Thunder doing jacking 37 threes in a relatively low scoring game?
It makes no sense whatsoever. As in none.
Why one of the worse three point shooting teams in the league is jacking threes is beyond me. The only guys on this team who should even be shooting threes are Paul George, Patrick Patterson, Abrines, and Westbrook to a lesser degree. Dennis Schroeder has been a weak three point shooter his entire career. Same with Jerami Grant. Terrance Ferguson only attempted two threes in Oakland so I think he’s under control somewhat. Plus, I’d feel bad dogging him since his lack of confidence is palpable currently. I’m not a bully like Jim Traber. Mike Stoops won’t ever have to talk shit on my blog.
You need three point shooting to space the floor and open the path to the rim, but you don’t need bad shooters taking those shots. In the NFL you don’t repeatedly throw the football to a receiver who can’t catch the ball. In baseball, you don’t put a marginal batter in the lineup who can’t hit a lefthander’s curve when a frigging left hander with a deadly curveball is on the mound.
YOU PLAY THE MATHMATICAL ODDS. I thought this was the basic premise of analytics.
Daily Thunder Trekkies this is when you say… ‘Hell, yeah.”
If I’m coaching this Thunder team…my main goal is to get either Westbrook or Schroder to the rim with Adams rolling with them. My second best option is Westbrook with the elbow pull up jumper. My next option is getting Paul George offensively engaged early in the game nd keeping him engaged.
My three point green light guys are in this order… Abrines, George, Patterson, and then Westbrook within reason and game situation. If Grant or Schroeder take a stupid three they’ll hear about it instantly.
I mean…I follow the Thunder team play and it’s as if what I’ve just written is never talked about in a team film room.
Good lord.
You now how long if would take for Alex Cora of Pop or Kerr to have this conversation with their players?
Like about half a second.
Dumb teams don’t go far.
Pop on Brad Stevens. Smart coaches begat smart teams. In his book, Steven Adams reveals his love of Pop. Writing that he’d just love to hug Pop and smell his hair. Now….the hair deal is a little much for me, but the rest of that I’m on board with. Unless it’s Kate Upton’s hair…hair smelling of celebs on my bucket list.