Daily Thunder.com

Keep safe in the blizzard, my friends! NO WORK! YES!!

Not immediately sure exactly what the +/- of the pair playing together is but Harden-Ibaka is no better than ok and might be worse. Maybe a two-step process to them starting together eventually rather than both at once.
Ibaka probably starts before Thabo. But not this season.

Thabo is the only player in the league with a usage below 10% who has played over 1000 minutes. Only 5 with over 400 minutes and Nick is also one of them. You are almost playing 4 on 5 on offense when a guy on the court has usage that low. Even just below 15% usage is usually a negative. Thabo is shooting the highest FG%s of his career on that low usage but that doesn't mean much. Westbrook's FGAs are too high from several perspectives. It almost seems like it "has to be" this high but he and they made it this way. It could have been different, I think. Could they change it now? I don't know. Will they try? I doubt it.

Hollinger's system in general may overweight recent play.

Easiest thing Utah can do would be playing Miles more and Bell less. But they probably should be try to make a trade. Maybe a multi-player one or several.

The team who should go after Andre Miller is the Lakers.

50-32*

50-35 is better than the 40 wins Hollinger projected for us a month or so ago. I still think Hollinger lowballs us. I still think we get somewhere between 53-55 wins.

Both Hollinger and basketball-reference project the Thunder going 20-15 the rest of the way. Probably largely due to 22 of the remaining 35 games against the west.

okafor out tomorrow, maybe wed

dominant*

You dont need statistics or be a rocket scientist to know we suck at defense. But our 2nd team comes in and does a little less suckin. Thats obvious to see. We dont pressure the ball. A simple head movement and we get beat. We give up the lane. We switch all the damn time on the ball handler instead of maybe trapping. We help on the bigs every time leaving the perimeter wide open. We are slow in rotation. We dont use the baseline as another defender..... ridiculous

We need a defensive minded assistant more then a big man in my opinion. But I wouldnt turn down another decent big man:)

According to Locke we are too high on Ibaka. I guess he'd be giving out his 3 big contracts to Durant, RW, and JG

Grr. Right now JG is better than Ibaka as far as movement of his feet is concerned and quickness, but Ibaka's potential as a dominate PF, is much higher than Green's

Listening to this interview, I find most of the numbers unsurprising. OUr "best" lineup with JG as the PF has the smallest sample size, and it was mostly against Indiana. Being better without Thabo on defense is not surprising. I was wondering that if Charlotte offers JG, $12 mil. a year, couldn't JG turn it down to stay in OKC for less, i.e., give us a hometown discount.

Harden needs to hit shots and not let Cook out play him. Ive been disappointed in him last few games.

You read to much into it. Just with defense. Westbrook and Harden allow more points by opponents then Maynor does on the court.

Harden is not a better ball handler then Westbrook.

denver loses to the nets... nice

Maybe's = Maynor's

Some of what Synergy classifies as PnR's probably aren't quite that on our team. Russ in particular has a tendency to rush them and move before the screen is set, and the screener is not really rolling or popping. Synergy classifies these as PnR.

Harden waits for the screens, he's patient, and he's pretty nifty making passes to roll guys in traffic. Maynor's not optimal because he struggles to score on his own so teams will sell on the roller. Maybe's PnR numbers are pretty poor according to Synergy.

Those are good statistic since we run the PnR so much:) Harden has a hard time going right

If Melo is not leaving Denver this season, and ostensibly, neither is Nene, would the front office just acquire Dalembart for Mo-Pete already.

Eric Maynor is 62nd in the league in PnR defense according to Synergy.

James Harden is 20th in the league in PPP as PnR ball handler. I think he's by far our best handler in the PnR.

TempBoy Brandon :@f5alcon

Here’s one of my videos for the Thunder broadcast contest. I figured you showed me yours, so I’d show you mine. I never thought I’d say that to another dude.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqnPZ26kY4I

lol, the funny thing is i have used that line on girls before. But yeah you are good. i think we both should have overlayed the audio over the video though, now that i am watching yours, but i doubt they expect that.

Melo staying with Denver is a stupid decision by that organization. He's NOT going to resign with you and more than likely, neither is Nene. Do you want to get nothing out of them? I guess that means Denver will still be a force to be reckoned with this year. Dang it!

We win the rebound and Turnover game. Jeff Greens fault

I disagree with the pod. That was not a good game by us against Miami. Wade had 9 turnovers and still got his points.

CP3 pretty much done Westbrook up all game 2. Your going to blame Maynor for losing that game for us. Playing a top 3 PG

Nobody said start Maynor over Westbrook.

BTW, David Locke is awesome and the OKC media could use someone like him for their NBA commentary. Locke wrote this about the Sonics after their cinderella run in 2004-2005 where they lost to the Spurs in the second round: http://www.seattlepi.com/locke/225647_locke25.html

I can't imagine Darnell writing that.

82Games used to do it but I don't think they do anymore. I was talking more theoretically. If a database like Hoopdata kept clutch stats for shot locations and FG% I think that would be very useful and revealing.

Most of what I've seen is primarily individual statistics.

I see what you're saying about half court heaves adjusting the percentages when you are looking at 50fga, that makes sense. Where can you find accurate team performance in the clutch stats?

I mean, we're talking 58 FGA for Durant in those situations this season, that's not even three full game's worth under normal circumstances, and KD takes a heck of a lot more shots per minute down the stretch due to the nature of our offense...

The biggest mystery about Utah to me is how poor a rebounding team they are. Millsap and Jefferson aren't world beaters but they have size. They're one of the worst defensive rebounding teams in the league.

I put a lot more stock into team performance in the clutch, though. I think those numbers are important and can give an idea of how the team performs and what they do in those situations. But individual performance just seems too noisy. I'm sure someone like DSMok could clear this up.

@Brad

Even if you use the last five minutes of EVERY game in a season, that's only ~400 minutes. For someone like Kobe Bryant who has played a bucketload of games, maybe you start to average out a lot of the noise if you look at his entire career in the clutch. But that's a miniscule sample for someone like Westbrook or Durant for the season. I'm guessing up to this point in this season it might not even amount to 100 minutes of game time. That's nothing, and considering the small sample, difficult half court end of game heaves and things like that probably affect the numbers more than they would in a larger sample.

102 minutes of clutch/crunch time seems like alot to me. Even 64 for harden is quite a few, that gives you a pretty good idea of how that player performs under those circumstances, atleast to me it does.

One of the reasons we lost the last game to NO is because Maynor was schooled by CP3, which ultimately led to us giving up our lead. You guys can't honestly say you'd rather start Maynor over Westbrook. I think RW should learn somethings from Maynor, but I don't know if Maynor starting would ultimately lead to more productivity.

@Brad

Last five minutes of the game when the scores are separated by no more than 5 points. The second part limits the scope quite a lot.

Westbrook actually leads the lead in minutes inside those parameters @ 102. After him is...

Thabo: 82
Green: 77
Durant: 73
Ibaka: 67
Harden: 64

Pretty limited sample.

justin :
I hate these clutch stats that Locke brings up. Such a ridiculously small sample.

Aren't most of them the "Last five minute of a close game" stats? Isn't that a fairly large sample?

@okc baby
it would but the reason its the best is cause it plays backups. but I dont think maynor could defend other starting pg's well, not saying westbrook does tho.

Iam pretty sure that lineup will do well against starters.

I loved this cast, team is better defensively when thabo is off the floor??? i think he should be the third shooting guard in rotation and maybe find some minutes at the 3. If Cook can keep stroken it than he needs minutes. That stat is amazing. The beard needs to start! and brooks loosen your damn leash on harden

@okc baby
AND they play the backups bud, but yes maynor is more of a true point than westbrook and that compliments durant and hardens scoring as well as collison's movement without the ball

Locke got some of his numbers wrong i.e. Nene's averages for the year.

@gr8ball83
Haha. I think the Thunder Girls should work that gesture into their next routine.

On a serious note though, how does he get a $25,000 fine but no technical call?

Maynor-Harden-Durant-Ibaka-Collison does well because you have two players with the highest basketball IQ on the team. And they play more like a team.

@TempBoy Brandon
the "i've got big balls" thing

Eddie House got fined $25,000 for an obscene gesture after his 3 point shot yesterday. I was at the game, so I have no idea what they are talking about. What was the gesture?

@Mark!
definitely a distinct possibility, my point is just that we haven't seen either of them enough in NBA play to have an idea of what they are right now. Cole definitely has much better skills in my opinion too

@Joel
Thanks man, I appreciate it! Yeah, if I win, I'll have all the DT'ers help me make up some sort of secret code word and try to fit it into the conversation at some point as a shout out to all you guys.