Series Preview: Warriors vs. Thunder
By Andy Serbe
To the surprise of quite a few NBA fans, one of the greatest defensive teams ever got bounced from the playoffs. The San Antonio Spurs , despite a great series from Kawhi Leonard and vintage moments from Tim Duncan (and not much from LaMarcus Aldridge past the first two games), lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The premier top-10 player tandem of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant proved too much, and the Spurs couldn’t keep up with the firepower.
Not to mention the fact that Steven Adams seems to be getting better every game, and Enes Kanter has been fantastic. Knocking off San Antonio has earned the Thunder a shot at the greatest regular season team ever, the 73-win Golden State Warriors. So, looking ahead to Monday’s game one, how to they match up, and how what are the Warriors’ keys to victory?
Oklahoma City Thunder
The Thunder run on star power. They feature two perennial MVP candidates in Westbrook and Durant, and they’ve got a bench that’s deep, if a bit hot and cold. Westbrook is a human nitrous canister, and Durant is a surgeon on offense.
Both play passable at worst defense, and very good defense at their best. If the Warriors are smart, they will expect the latter. By now, however, we know who Westbrook and Durant are. They are offensive powerhouses, both excellent passers, and present matchup nightmares for just about any team due to their size and pure athleticism. What everyone should be talking about here is their big men.
The Thunder crushed San Antonio on the boards, in big part due to Adams and Kanter. The Spurs and Thunder averaged 43.9 and 48.6 rebounds per game during the season respectively, good for 14th and 1st in the league. During the Western Conference semifinals, they both averaged less, but only one got way less. The Thunder averaged 45.3 rebounds per game.
The Spurs only managed 33.8. That manifests in increased second chances for the Thunder, more fastbreaks, and more possessions as well as less second chance points for San Antonio.
Kanter is one of the most valuable offensive big men in the league right now, and Adams, while less refined, plays smart. Layups, dunks, good picks, and cuts are his game, and he does them well. And if they get offensive boards, the last people you want getting another shot at the rim on offense are Durant and Westbrook (and to a lesser degree Dion Waiters, who has been hitting his open shots well).
This team wins games on offense more often than not, and they have a lot of firepower. If it’s a massacre on the glass in their favor, they have the advantage.
Golden State Warriors
The Warriors have their MVP back. After two fantastic games, Stephen Curry looks like he’s shaken off whatever rust he picked up. The team has some nagging injury, as Andrew Bogut is hurt and not practicing and Draymond Green tweaked his ankle (though he should be ready for game time).
As always, the Warriors will look aggressively for an outside shot and for smart passing. The driving game will be key, since it will force the Thunder’s perimeter defenders to recover and open up one of Golden State’s second-tier shooters like Green and Andre Iguodala. If Bogut is hurt, then Festus Ezeli is going to have to step up big time in a very conservative role. He will have to rebound aggressively and prioritize defense. Limiting his offensive touches outside of lobs and open shots inside of 5 feet is in the team’s best interests this series.
A big burden is going to go onto Klay Thompson, Shaun Livingston, and Iguodala this series, since they will be the most likely defense rotation looking to bottle up Westbrook. Russ will have to be paid close attention to all over the court, especially since he punished teams that decided to try a strategy where they would sag off him to the tune of 40% from distance on open shots.
The Warriors will probably have to just place Harrison Barnes on Durant and live with whatever happens, looking for help from Green and their other frontcourt rotation players.
Verdict
The key matchup here is frontcourt rebounding. Ezeli/Bogut versus Adams/Kanter. Potentially losing Bogut really hurts the Warriors. As mentioned above, the Thunder are an offensive powerhouse with a couple of key defensive players like Andre Roberson who will bother Curry. Curry, Thompson, Westbrook, and Durant are all star players, the latter three on the top tier. T
he strategies for handling them are generally widely known, and they are not likely to change. Unlike the Trailblazers series, won on the perimeter, this series will be won in the trenches. Rebounding, rebounding, rebounding. The Warriors need their big men to clean the glass aggressively, even if it costs them some of their precious fastbreak points.
This is going to be a tough, offensive series between two volatile scoring teams, unlike the expected Spurs-Warriors season where games would have essentially been won at 95 points.
The Warriors are still a 73-win team, and one that beat two teams in five games essentially without the MVP, but this is a worst-case matchup for them, since they can struggle on the glass (especially in bench units), and have rough games against explosive guards.
If they let the Thunder manhandle them on the boards like they did the Spurs, they have a very big problem. Look for Marreese Speights to be more important than anyone wants him to be this series. However, they went 3-0 against Oklahoma City (in hard-fought games) this year, and they remain the smart pick in any series. They should have enough to overpower in this series.
Pick: Warriors in 7