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Throughout the NBA play-offs, The National’s resident NBA dudes Jonathan Raymond and Kevin Jeffers will be breaking down the key talking points of the night before, plus looking around the scope of the league. Today, they discuss the Western Conference Finals between the top-seeded defending champion Golden State Warriors and the start-studded Oklahoma City Thunder.
Jonathan Raymond
I have a problem with the Warriors-Thunder series. Here is my problem:
By nature I usually try to see a path to victory for the underdog, and not just an injury-apocalypse path. Both because it’s just a bit more fun than conceding things before they even begin, and because we have to make content some way, right? Right.
But I don’t see a path for Oklahoma City. But but! I didn’t see a path for Oklahoma City in the last round, either.
I can’t get around my own Thunder blinders, and I might even in fact be an Oklahoma City Hater™.
So please, help me with my OKC problem. Lay out a path to victory for the Thunder in this series, because I think Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook are delightful talents and, my own rooting interests aside, I’d like this to be a series of high-quality, competitive basketball.
So how do we get this thing past five games? Or six or seven? Could the Thunder even ... win?
Kevin Jeffers
First off, shout out to the NBA for giving writers a full 24 hours to breathe between play-off rounds.
Now to your point: I see a path for the Thunder, and it runs through Steven Adams.
The Warriors need Andrew Bogut this series in a way that they could usually get by without him. The starting centre is banged-up and questionable for Game 1. Adams has been a monster this post-season and has taken that leap by basically doing what Bogut does best: Grabbing every available offensive rebound and being there to completely vacuum up the lane on defence for slash-type guards like Tony Parker and Steph Curry (granted that slashing to the lane is only part of Curry’s game, but don’t rest on how big a part).
Remember the bonkers Thunder-Warriors game from February, when Curry hit the 32-foot game winner in overtime? The Thunder out-rebounded the Warriors 76-41 that game. Rebounding could decide a couple or few games in a 7-game series, and as absurd as Curry is, you can’t always count on 32-foot game winners.
JR
Okay, I buy Adams’ importance. He can’t pass like Bogut, but that’s not remotely Oklahoma City’s game so he doesn’t need to.
One thing that nags at me a little, in discounting OKC, is that we always say things like “Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant can take over and just win a game or two”. And, yeah, that’s true, but over the course of a 7-game series against another elite team, it’s rare that things actually turn on that. Thought against the Spurs, they, well, sort of did.
Except ... the Thunder didn’t particularly do anything different offensively. What they did was lock down defensively while their role players stepped up.
Is that repeatable against Golden State? By which I mean, if Durant and Westbrook do their thing – and there’s no reason to think they won’t – are the Warriors really at risk of crumbling the same way the Spurs did under unexpected defensive pressure and Dion Waiters 7-of-11 shooting nights?
KJ
It’s definitely repeatable. What isn’t repeatable, though, is counting on the greatest three-point-shooting team ever to completely forget how to shoot from outside like the Spurs did.
That said, if Golden State has an Achilles’ heel on defence, it’s guarding score-first, dominant point guards, and Westbrook is the best in the business. Let’s say the combination of Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, Andre Iguodala and even Klay Thompson guard Durant. You probably don’t want Thompson expending all of his energy on defence by also chasing around Westbrook if he’s having to help on Durant (which, as one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, he will at some point). But even worse is leaving Curry one-on-one with Westbrook, and you can only hide Curry on Andre Roberson for so long. Who does that leave for Westbrook?
A line-up with Green at centre won’t be able to handle Adams or Enes Kanter inside. A line-up with Bogut at centre could leave Curry and Thompson to take turns on Westbrook, and hope Barnes and Green can slow down Durant.
That’s a convoluted way of saying the Thunder have weapons to take advantage of the Warriors’ minimal weaknesses the way other teams don’t. There are at least options where most teams don’t have options.
Plus, OKC played Golden State as well as anyone this year. Even though they lost all 3 games, they were either tied or led at one point in the 4th quarter in each of those games. Durant especially feasted on them, averaging 36.3 points and 12 rebounds.
At any time, Durant or Westbrook can be the best player on the floor, even if the other team has the two-time MVP on the floor.
JR
We haven’t discussed this, but the Adams-Kanter big line-up makes for a fascinating potential counter to the Warriors’ small-ball, Green-at-centre unit.
If you can take away Golden State’s death line-up, and Bogut can’t play, and there’s a lot of Festus Ezeli/Anderson Varejao minutes being paired with Green, suddenly things become very dicey for the champions.
But look – I fundamentally don’t believe OKC can stop Golden State like they did the Spurs. I disagree that you can’t hide Curry on Roberson for only so long – Roberson is a serious offensive liability. I think if the Thunder get stuck coming from behind, they’ll bench Roberson and turn to some of their Adams-Kanter line-ups or heavy Waiters minutes to juice the offence, and I think they’re vulnerable to getting killed from outside defensively in that situation. That it didn’t kill the Thunder against the Spurs, and that they were able to employ it for as much as they did over the final three games (fun fact – Adams, Kanter and Roberson weren’t together on the floor for a single minute in the Thunder’s final three Round 2 wins) was a huge reason the series turned as it did.
Suddenly, the Thunder had an extra offensive gear, and the Spurs couldn’t punish them on the other end for it. I think the Warriors will. The Spurs went 0-for-6 in Game 4 from three, their starters were 3-for-10 in Game 6.
What we could see is if Oklahoma City struggle, they’ll revert to the Durant-Westbrook, you-go-I-go offence, which for all of their talents is just not as dynamic as what Golden State can produce.
You note how the Thunder were in all three games against the Warriors this year, and probably should have even won one. That sounds right to me. A tight series, that the Warriors win in six.
KJ
It’s going to be fun and high-scoring. As much as we wanted Warriors-Spurs all year, I think I’m even more excited for Warriors-Thunder. I hope it goes 7. I say it goes 7.
Warriors in 7.
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