This OKC Thunder Strategy Is Quietly Breaking Basketball
By Reinis Lacis (@LamarMatic)
They did it on Opening Night against the Denver Nuggets and Jamal Murray. So I figured that I should be on the lookout… Was that a random occurrence of Coach Daigneault having such a trick in his back pocket? Or will they stick to it?
Then it happened on Game 4 (Stephon Castle, Keldon Johnson and Chris Paul). Game 5 (Scoot Henderson). Game 6 (Norman Powell). It was obvious! They have a certain set of rules of doubling on the opponent’s supposed last possession of the quarter and they will stick to them. I decided that this must be charted throughout the whole season:
Excel link on Google Drive of all such traps by OKC!
Some of the color codes within the Excel:
- Gray means other noteworthy possessions. Like, times when OKC’s opponents do it against them (probably not all of them were charted). Or when they double Nikola Jokic and James Harden the whole game, so it kind of falls out from the framework of this being a surprise element.
- Blue means it happening in Fourth Quarters. Definitely different set of circumstances as teams might double then out of having no other options, while the opponents have better players on the court.
- Pink was a time when they doubled Donovan Mitchell earlier than usual. So I wouldn’t count that exactly. Just some OKC-like high jinks of throwing random scares at the offense.
- Purple helped me chart the times when an offensive rebound led to another supposed Final Play.
The column of “Where” follows this basketball zone map created by Dean Oliver. It might seem like a lot at first, but it’s actually quite easy to get used to.
The rest should be easy to comprehend. The first of the Doublers is the one guarding the ball, the second one is his help-defender (perhaps, there is something you can do with, let’s say, the occurrences when Aaron Wiggins is pressuring the ball).
The Zoning Up Trio is written in the order from the left corner (from the offense’s perspective) to the right one. Data regarding something like the True Shooting Percentage of the player, from which they double, should be fascinating.
If you have reached this point of the blog, yet haven’t seen the video itself, I’ll mention in text that the core principle is quite simple. Any time OKC’s opponent had the opportunity to play out the last possession of any of the first three quarters, Mark Daigneault raised his hand to send a hard double towards the ball handler.
It helps you achieve several things. You take the ball out of the hands of the primary creator, you deploy hound dogs like Alex Caruso to stay on them and deny a pass back. Moreover, OKC made a point to double off a relatively weaker perimeter shooter or creator, which plenty of times lead to bad decisions on the offense’s part.
You’ll see it best in the video above. However, let’s just nail some of the key facts here in text:
- They had done it for 49 games, and still were up 25-23 in the total score following any such hard doubles/traps. Just an amazing sentence…
- The Thunder ended up 29-49 after 63 such possessions during the regular season.
Here is the research the great Ben Taylor had on “Why don’t NBA teams foul to regain possession at the end of the first 3 quarters?“:
- Fouling on purpose would lead to -0.70ppp;
- Not fouling (and playing out the defensive possession) would lead to -0.40ppp;
- The Thunder finished at -0.32ppp. So can we call it a success?
Plenty of research can still be done here. I would love to see how the Thunder did in every last minute of first to third quarters, since Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams appeared to have no conscience about when to attack. They knew they can always fall back to this doubling on the defensive end. Thus every play before this one adds some very needed context either way.
Moreover, I would give plenty of credit to coaching staffs lead by Chauncey Billups (Portland Trail Blazers), Jason Kidd (Dallas Mavericks), Jordi Fernandez (Brooklyn Nets) and Charles Lee (Charlotte Hornets) who were doing it plenty of times during the season, for it not be a random event. However, without the personnel the Thunder have, it might be possible that they had worse results. I just don’t know the answer to it.
Yet I know that there are plenty of interesting questions still to be asked. And answers to be found.
Reinis Lacis's Basketball Blog 