The Thunder Are Putting the NBA On Notice.

The Thunder Are Putting the NBA On Notice.

OKC extended their winning streak to five games last night and that five-game winning streak includes wins against the number one defense in the NBA in the Minnesota Timberwolves the defending champions in the Denver Nuggets and the Boston Celtics Who currently hold the best record in the NBA this win streak

Has been a little bit of a coming out party for the Thunder as they’re showcasing what they’re capable of as far as being both in Elite defense and an elite offense OKC is currently the best halfcourt offense in the NBA and the fourth best halfcourt defense in the

NBA making them one of only five teams in the league that currently rank top 10 in both but what exactly has made OKC’s offense so difficult for opposing defenses to slow down and how has OKC been adapting to defenses throwing new things at them to try and force them

Into deviating from their game plan we can find answers to a lot of those questions in last night’s game against the Celtics we know that OKC is going to drive and they’re going to drive a lot they drive more than any other team in

The NBA as a matter of fact and for good reason they’re shooting with the third highest efficiency in the league off of drives on the highest driving volume in the league obviously a huge part of that is going to be Shay gilis Alexander in the defensive attention that He commands

Being able to create plenty of opportunities for OKC to score off of Jet’s going to come up in screen for Shay and porzingis is in drop coverage which leaves Chad wide open up top to pop out and get the pass now to D White’s credit he’s going to make a

Pretty good recovery to close out on Chad but Chad’s going to start to break him down off the dribble so that he can get into this spin move going downhill and he ultimately gets the fadeaway jumper to fall on this play Drew holiday is going to commit to fighting over the

Screen giving Shay the go-ahead to get going downhill Sam Hower was already overplaying it so he has to make a difficult recovery on the drive and it forces Al Horford to come off of Isaiah Joe to provide that help with Tatum stuck between covering the corner man on

A potential kick out and helping stop the Shay Drive Isaiah Joe relocates to the perimeter leaving him wide open for the spot up three off of the drive here OKC is going to run these corner pin downs and Wiggins is going to feed Joe coming up off the screen from Chad

Isaiah Joe is going to get chat the ball in the post so that they can run what’s called a get action where Joe’s going to cut by him to get the handoff but instead of giving the handoff to Joe Chet’s going to instead fake the hand

Off to try and attack the middle against Tatum but the strong defense from t forces the pick up this puts OKC in a situation where they have four out on the perimeter and Chad is the lone man inside the ark which leaves really no resistance down low at the rim with the

Defense having to stay home on Shooters this is going to allow Joe to capitalize by making a back door cut for CAD to find him for a wide openen slam now in the first quarter of this game Shay played all 12 minutes at the start of

The second quarter he’s going to be on the bench you can immediately see the offensive philosophy shift from being pretty pick and roll SL pick and pop and drive heavy to being a lot more movement based with some more off ball screening happening this possession starts out

Looking as though meic might screen for Dort but instead he’s going to cut down to the weak side block Chet’s going to screen for Dort to move along the top of the key and Dort gets it to CET so that he can flow into a handoff with J as he

Initiates the handoff meic is going to cut up from the low block with Dort replacing where he was what ends up happening is Tatum follows Dort but cornette stays to provide nail help on the pick and roll despite Horford already being there and it leaves meic

Open to get the pass cornette closes out and meic leaves him behind on the attack forcing Drew to help at the nail and he’s going to kick it out to jdub who’s then wide open for three early on in the second quarter the Celtics made a pretty smart adjustment using the double big

Lineup of porzingis and cornette and what it did was shut down a lot of the driving Lanes in the middle of the floor that OKC likes to operate in and most most importantly it kept porzingis from getting in rotation on the perimeter and allowed him to focus primarily on

Anchoring the defense around the rim in the 17 possessions where cornette and porzingis were on the floor during this game OKC only scored 15 points holding them to only 88 points per possession OKC did end up countering the double big lineup they made more of an emphasis to

Push the pace in transition and this prevented Boston’s defense from setting up and allowed them to keep porzingis away away from the middle of the floor so that they could get to the rim against less deterrence they also put chat back in and used him as a decoy on

The week side allowing Cas and Wallace to get the iso against cornette here and then near the end of the second quarter porzingis was a lot less eager to come over and contest Shay at The Rim knowing that it was Chad out there spacing the floor in the corner another thing about

The Celtics is that they have two extremely good screen Navigators in Drew holiday and Derek white and it makes it really difficult for opposing team seems to get a ton of space to work with coming off of screens OKC is a team that loves to attack downhill off of screens

But they actually add another layer to the equation Shay is incredibly good at rejecting screens when he recognizes that the defense is over playing him he’s going to set up with Chad here for this side pick and roll but once Drew takes a step towards the screen he’s

Going to use this In-N-Out dribble to attack the middle of the floor forcing Derek white to slide down to help stop the drive and it leaves jdub open on the wing for the catch and shoot three here they’re going to load up for a pick and roll and Shay rejects the

Screen and uses that ridiculous quick first step to attack the basket the thing to notice is that OKC started keeping Aaron Wiggins down low in the dunker spot with Jaylen Brown on him with giddy spaced out to the corner with porzingis on him this creates the

Illusion that Brown is going to be there to provide help keeping porzingis away from the paint and Shay faces significantly less resistance going up for the shot when the defense starts to anticipate the screen rejection angling to provide help on the drive OKC has a go-to

Counter since Chad is able to just pop out to the perimeter for the easy pick and pop three Austin was really starting to key in on the pick and roll game between Shay and chat with porzingis shutting down drives before they could even start and then here he recovers to

Chad out on the perimeter still there’s the concern of Shay getting by Tatum in isolation so porzingis has to stay near the nail just in case of a blow and it leaves CAD enough space to get the shot off when Shay draws the help at the

Nail with 30 seconds left in the game they had J bring the ball up the floor and Shay is going to come as if he’s going to screen but he ghost it and what this does is force the switch but more importantly it gives JB this bit of

Space between him and Tatum so that he can get some steam going downhill forcing Tatum into backpedaling and with Tatum trying to stay in front of him jdub is just going to stop and pull up for the mid-range bucket and it forced the Celtics to go to the intentional

Foul game leading to OKC pulling out the win in this game OKC scored 122 points per 100 possessions in the half court against a Celtics team that’s top 10 in half court defense even with the Celtics making big runs in the second quarter and the fourth quarter the Thunder stuck

To their process and trusted their scheme and it paid off and this was a Celtics team that was throwing a lot of stuff at them to try and slow down their offense that double big lineup that I mentioned earlier that the Celtics were running with Kristof porzingis and Luke

Cornette on the floor together the Celtics have only used that two-man lineup in three other games this season OKC’s offense was putting so much pressure on them that Joe Missoula had to get as creative as possible to try and slow them down and even though that

Lineup managed to slow them down for a little bit OKC eventually found their footing and they were able to comfortably counter it there’s been plenty of talk lately about OKC making a trade for somebody like Larry marinan and don’t get me wrong I still still think that would make them an insanely

Good team even better than they already are and there’s definitely a balance between putting all your chips on the table and going for a championship when you feel like your window is closing but I also don’t think that the Thunder should be in any rush because what we’ve

Seen so far and what they’re doing with what they have right now might just be enough to get them where they need to be now you can still be too patient and end up shooting yourself in the foot but there’s no need to rush and unless you

Can get the exact guy that you want that you know is going to put you over the edge then they should just sit tight until it makes sense to pull the trigger yes they still have their weaknesses and they still have moments where you remember just how young this team is but

Given how competitive they’ve looked against some of the best teams in basketball over the last month they might be even better than even some of the most optimistic preseason projections made them out to be so do you guys think that OKC needs to make a trade do you think that they are finals

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The OKC Thunder are forcing the rest of the NBA to wake up after their win against the Boston Celtics last night. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is solidifying himself as not just a true superstar, but at this point, he’s up there as a clear MVP candidate.

Chet Holmgren has been the perfect compliment to SGA, providing him with plenty of screening, and his ability to pop out of the pick and roll makes the OKC Thunder offense so difficult to cover. While Chet Holmgren’s defense has been garnering plenty of attention on it’s own, he’s also proven that he has tons of upside on the offensive end.

With everybody suggesting that the OKC Thunder trade some of their assets for a guy like Lauri Markkanen, their win against the Celtics really makes you ask the question: do the Oklahoma City Thunder even NEED to make a trade?

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