Oklahoma City Thunder: Offensive Notes Part 1: Transition/Early O

Before beginning this dive into the Oklahoma City Thunder Offense. I will start by stating this is NOT a comprehensive breakdown or playbook. This is just a collection of things that I have enjoyed from my study of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Oklahoma City Thunder might have the most interesting offense in the NBA to date. A team filled with young talent, but not the perennial developed talent that you will see from a typical NBA offensive juggernaut.

Coach Daigneault has taken this relentlessly attacking guard oriented offense and turned them into my opinion the most interesting NBA watch you will find. This is an offense that prides itself on paint touch after paint touch, but are still able to find efficiency with limited outside shooting. Ranking in the bottom half of the NBA in regular season 3 point percentage.

Here are some things that I found interesting from my overview of the Thunder Offense.

Downsizing/Prioritizing Big Shooting for Offensive Production

It is safe to say I do not have quantitative data on just how large the defensive tradeoffs were, but it’s clear that the Thunder Offense was much more effective when playing a stretch big or a non big in general. Usually being one of the three Jaylin Williams, Kenrich Williams, or Mike Muscala at the big spot. Looking at this table, the three most efficient lineups included (minimum 50 minutes played) Muscala or Jaylin Williams at the big.

Stats via NBA.com

Every member of this trio splitting minutes at the big shoots over 37 percent from beyond the arc. Now the question becomes how are the Thunder able to leverage this to their advantage? The simplest way is within their early offensive attack where the Thunder like to play out of early penetration whether that is via grab & go, hit ahead attack, or off an early reversal or 2 man action on the ball (DHO/P&R).

No Rim Run Attacks

Big Trail 3’s

• Playing out of early penetration is ideal for a big that can stretch the floor. As many bigs are prone to overhelping on drives in order to protect the rim. This allows the big to generate a ton of opportunities out of the trail spot or other areas on the floor when they do not have to rim run and clog up the paint.
• This allows OKC to suck defenders in early which often creates 2 on the ball advantages to play out of early in the shot clock.

Early Drives

• In these clips you can see how the floor really opens up for the early drives and some of the advantages that positioning you early attack without a rim runner provide
• In the first clip OKC is playing with Aleksej Pokusevski as their big who does not have the same shooting gravity as the trio mentioned above but is much more of a perimeter oriented player. His positioning alone pulls Steven Adams away from the hoop which allows Dort to attack 1v1 to the rim with a nonexistent rotation from Memphis backside.
• In the second clip Golden State finds themselves crossmatched as Looney overplays the rim in his positioning running back on defense. Overanticipating an early SGA drive. This allows for a long closeout on one of OKC’s dynamic downhill guards Josh Giddey. Cross matches are fantastic, but cross matched closeouts with the opposing teams 5 are almost a near perfect offensive scenario.

Early Cuts off Early Penetration

• This also frees up my favorite part of OKC’s Early offensive attack which is their ability to cut off their early drives which combines all of there strengths which are stretch bigs, downhill driving guards, and big bodied finishers on the wing that can cut with force and finish through contact. If you want to leverage average shooting you must be an elite cutting team.
• Sidenote: Aaron Wiggins = Best Cutter off Drives in the NBA

Early Barkleys

• This is not something you see a ton of when watching the Thunder but I think it could be wildly effective. Especially throughout their play in games as we saw teams really key in on SGA.
• It plays to the strengths of their main scorers and decision makers (SGA & Giddey) it also allows them to get the defense rotating early because of their scoring gravity.
• Important O question to ask yourself. Who are our best players? How can they draw 2? How quickly can we get them to draw 2?