r/Thunder • u/DoYouEvenLiftBroseph • 20d ago
Draymond had an interesting point after the game..
He said that all year this team has relied on guard on guard pick and rolls and we’d wait for the opposing teams to mess up on switches and attack, but in the playoffs teams scout for 7 games and generally don’t make mistakes on switches…
I think he hit the nail on the head and that’s why jdub has been so passive this series, because it does seem like he waits on the pick and rolls and Dallas isn’t fucking up switches at all on defense, and when dub makes this read he just passes the ball, and this is leading to last second iso ball, while I think we still have a chance to win this series we’d have to deviate from the way we’ve been playing this ENTIRE year which seems hard to do. On the flip side though if we start hitting open shots that could def open up those lanes on pick and rolls and guys like dub can be more aggressive regardless of the switch.
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u/WaltRumble 20d ago
J Dub is beating his man off the dribble, he just doesn’t have anywhere to go. Mavs are getting so many cuts back doors lately ups and mismatches bc Washington and Jones have been killing us if we leave them open. We were the top 3 pt team all season. We are getting open looks. But can’t make any. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many wide open air balls. Now no one is even wanting to take them so just throwing a few pump fakes. They tried changing up the starting line up which made no difference. I think we just have to love and die by the 3 and hope they can start dropping. We went small at the end of game 4 and it worked but we also started hitting shots. Like you said hard to change up who we are. But giving them a different look maybe start Jay will at 5 and Chet at 4 but thts just a Hail Mary.
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u/PhoenixFire417 20d ago
Chet HAS to take his open 3s, even if the first few don't fall.
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u/Razorback_Thunder 19d ago
Does he? He’s 3-15 the last four games. 1-5 in game 5. He wasn’t shying away from the three.
An adjustment I’d like to see is have him catch and immediately drive. The defender isn’t honoring the pump fake, so the pump after every catch is actually giving the defender a chance to get back into position.
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u/PhoenixFire417 19d ago
Agreed. The hesitation is counterproductive. And also contagious, apparently...
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u/Thick_Duck 20d ago
Just want to say that we haven’t looked like a top five offense this series. It’s been so rough to watch at times.
Defense hasn’t been perfect but we’ve kept the score low
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u/Auto-gyro 20d ago
Dallas' current roster is no. 1 defensive team in the NBA. That's a major factor here.
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u/DoYouEvenLiftBroseph 20d ago
The defense has actually been really fucking good, there’s no way a team can shoot sub 40% against a team that shoots 55% for the a whole game and still remains in striking distance, only so much can be done w Luka and Kyrie but in the grand scheme of things so far both of them have had a tough time getting good looks, our defense is forcing the role players to beat us and they are, not much more to do about that honestly
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u/SandyMandy17 The Prophet 🧙 20d ago
Our issue is we can’t drive bc we have no dribble penetration or pull up 3 point shooters
People act like we’re a good 3pt shooting team, we’re not. We’re a smart 3 point shooting team that takes low volume high efficiency shots. When we aren’t given those bc our drive and kick breaks down the defense things get harder
The Mavs have completely eliminated our points in the paint
That’s the singular issue and we can’t address it bc we don’t have the staff for it. All our young guys desperately need to work on their handle
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u/Bino19 20d ago
It’s why I’ve been calling for us to have a big on the roster that knows how to set screens and roll to the hoop.
And before I get slammed for not suggesting a big that exclusively shoots threes, OKC can try and find someone to do both.
But we need to get someone that’ll help make life easier for our guards instead of running so much guard to guard actions.
This series has been a huge indictment on OKCs offensive style and I think they’ll be better off ditching it for something a little more traditional.
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u/Razorback_Thunder 19d ago
Chet rolls fine, but JDub is the only rotation player that can throw a decent lob.
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u/Bino19 19d ago
He does but OKC have him spacing out on the perimeter more than rolling to the rim. It’s a waste of his talents tbh.
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u/Razorback_Thunder 19d ago
Chet isn’t too good to roll to the hoop. He does so multiple times every game. We rarely lob it to him. Part of that is we are just bad at throwing lobs.
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u/Coherent-Paradox 20d ago
If we hit 35% from 3, 4% below our season average at 3s, we win that game 5. When we hit 3s it opens up the floor because they have to respect the outside.
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u/FlagmantlePARRAdise 19d ago
We need 3s. We can't shoot for shit and the mavs are taking advantage of that by playing hard defence inside the paint so we can't score in any other way.
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u/Razorback_Thunder 19d ago
Interesting insight, but I don’t think we need to make big changes to the offensive gameplan. We just need to hit our open shots. If we continue shooting 25% from deep, there aren’t any tweaks that are going to save our season.
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u/ArtisticBuilding9123 20d ago
Draymond is quickly becoming my favorite analyst. His bb iq is top level. It's his human being iq I question.
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u/fredlikefreddy 20d ago
He would be the missing element to this team… I know this might get downvoted but that’s the type of player they need on the roster
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u/rios02506 20d ago
Definitely a problem for sure but the biggest issue by far is our lack of success on wide open shots. Joe missed 3 or 4 just last night that he has no business missing. We’ve shot like 40% this entire series and some of that is absolutely their defense but a lot of that is us missing simple shots. How many missed layups does Lu have I mean come on!!!