Oklahoma City Thunder are shooting themselves out of playoffs
Oklahoma City Thunder are shooting themselves out of playoffs
This season, Oklahoma City Thunder managed to finish on the 6th place in the Western Conference, meaning that they would meet Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the playoffs. At first sight, this matchup looked really interesting as both teams have some amazing players. However, after winning the first game by a small margin, Portland Trai Blazers destroyed their opponents in the second one.
There are many reasons for this loss but they can all be comprehended in one sentence: the Oklahoma City Thunder players’ are not well-coached. What I mean by this is that they are not using their strengths but are forcing to play with their weaknesses. Oklahoma City Thunder is shooting a lot of three-pointers even though they see that the shots aren’t going in.
When you have a player like Russell Westbrook who is fast, agile, strong why do you use him like this? He should play more one on one, try to get past the defenders and get into the paint. There he has two options: go all the way or draw some other defenders and pass to the free player. Easy basketball.
I get that in some days players can have a bad slump but in most of the times, it is not like this. Instead of playing like this, Russell Westbrook forces shots with defenders on him, he runs the floor without any goal and he commits a lot of turnovers. He does this while his team scored only 10 threes in the first two games of the playoff. To put this into perspective, Steph Curry already has 13 threes while Damian Lillard has 9. In the last game, Westbrook scored only 5 of his 20 shots and he had 6 turnovers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the players of OKC. They are great, they have a lot of talent, they can defend and rebound very well. But in the offense, Oklahoma City Thunder doesn’t have any strategy besides shooting and this will get them out of playoffs. Hopefully, next season Billy Donovan will leave the team and the management will hire a better coach.
