Coming in, recent history suggested that the meeting of NBA heavyweights that is this year’s Western Conference Final would be an evenly contested bout. The San Antonio Spurs had made quick work of the Trail Blazers in the second round, sure, but the Oklahoma City Thunder owned an 11-6 record against them over the past three seasons (including playoffs). That record may have been a bit deceiving, but still it seemed that OKC could be entering with a slight upper hand. Then Serge Ibaka went down with a season-ending calf injury.
Ibaka’s loss is particularly disheartening when you consider the effect of his presence in head-to-heads with San Antonio. In four matchups this season, the Spurs’ offence was limited to an average of 93 points per 100 possessions with Ibaka on the floor. With the big man absent from the equation that number ballooned to 120.8, according to NBA.com. It’s tough to capture the full extent of a player’s influence in a single metric, but that figure is scarily reflective of the impact Ibaka’s presence around the rim has on the Thunder’s opponents.
The loss of Ibaka’s offence, as well as his ability to protect the paint without having to foul (the Spurs’ free-throw attempt rate soared from 20.0 percent to 29.2 when he headed to the bench) drastically transforms the Thunder on both sides of the ball. And a major symptom of that transformation is an intensifying of the already blinding spotlight on Kevin Durant’s performance in the series.
The shakeup of the Thunder’s genetics was clear in Game 1 on Monday night. In Ibaka’s absence, Oklahoma City turned to a super-small crew (Russell Westbrook, Derek Fisher, Reggie Jackson, Caron Butler & Durant) that not only featured Durant at centre, but also hadn’t recorded a single minute of playing time together in the regular season. Leaning on Durant, Westbrook and a stockpile of stagnant shooters, the Thunder still shot 46.2 percent from the floor, but more than one in five of the their offensive plays were sourced from spot-ups.
With so many of their rotation players lacking the capacity to create off the dribble, OKC was—and will likely continue to be—left leaning very heavily on Durant’s ability to dominate his individual matchups. Of KD’s 19 Game 1 field-goal attempts, 11 came with Kawhi Leonard guarding him. That he converted six of those 11 looks like pretty good news for the Thunder, and prompted Gregg Popovich to swap out Leonard’s coverage of Durant for Danny Green’s.
Leonard is particularly effective manning the pick-and-roll—smothering the ball-handler and fighting through screens to force turnovers. Opponents scored on just 32.6 percent of pick-and-rolls when the third-year forward had the responsibility of covering the man in possession, according to Synergy Sports—a number that owes a lot to Leonard’s lateral speed and his timing when wrestling over the top of picks. Consider this sample, from a meeting between the two teams on April 3 in OKC:
Leonard bursts through the screen set by Steven Adams outside the three-point arc, trails Durant, and recovers to heavily contest the 17-foot jumper. It’s a neat example of his defensive brilliance, and it all takes place in a little more than two seconds.
Leonard’s PnR coverage is perfectly complemented by Tiago Splitter, who flanks him in San Antonio’s setup and excels at stifling the roll man, part of a Spurs’ system that encourages defenders to hedge hard on screens and then quickly retreat. Splitter found himself on an island on defence at times in Game 1, hurriedly searching for an opponent due to the cross-matching caused by OKC’s quirky five-man lineups, but a few split-seconds of indecision won’t be enough to cause real alarm in the Spurs’ camp.
Scott Brooks will be sure to tinker with the rotation again following the loss in Game 1, but there’s little that’s likely to overwhelm the Spurs’ bench in the series’ ongoing chess match. San Antonio is more than capable of going small, and a healthy balance of Green and Leonard should limit Durant to the extent that it’s possible to limit him.
When Popovich swapped Leonard for Green on Monday night, the Thunder predictably countered the assignment by having Durant repeatedly post him up, looking to exploit the size differential between the two.
Durant still went 4-for-8 against Green, but neither that nor his success against Leonard is likely to cause a meaningful re-evaluation for San Antonio. More often than not, Gregg Popovich and his disciples will be content to show confidence in the one-on-one abilities of their wing players.
Unfortunately for Durant, the Thunder’s lineup experiments aren’t aimed at creating easier opportunities on the offensive end for their primary weapon. Instead, they’re designed to milk whatever scoring they can from anyone not named Durant or Westbrook. The attempt to generate mismatches by throwing a curveball missed badly in Game 1, which, going forward, should lead to a bump in floor time for Nick Collison, who stayed on the court for just 16 minutes despite starting.
Although he lacks the shooting touch of OKC’s missing starter—painfully evident after a pair of clanked jumpers from patented Ibaka spots in the opening quarter—Collison’s astute post defence and refined role give the Thunder units a hint of normality. Even if only to relieve Durant of his duties at the five spot (where he played fewer than one percent of the available minutes in the regular season), it could be a worthy tweak.
Oklahoma City’s blueprint for success has been crumpled, but not destroyed. The loss of Ibaka is devastating and not one that can be adequately covered by plastering over the cracks. But that may be all the Thunder can do as they look for some combination of adjustments to halt the momentum of the Spurs’ last six playoff victories—all by double digits—and downsize the significant sway of Kawhi Leonard on both sides of the ball. Their only other option? Keep asking Kevin Durant to do it all.
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