Warriors beat writer Danny Emerman shares his thoughts on the NBA
The Thunder have been the Western Conference’s best team all season and just this week convincingly beat the past two defending champions in the Celtics and Nuggets.
Oklahoma City has a historically great defense — No. 1 against both 3-pointers and in the paint — and an unguardable MVP favorite in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. They can play five-out with speed or go double-bigs with Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. They don’t have a single player in the rotation who opposing teams can hunt on a mismatch and are on pace for 67 wins.
Only the Cavaliers have had a better start-to-finish season than Oklahoma City, and they’ve had extremely good injury luck.
The Thunder are probably going to win the West. At this point, they’d probably be my title pick — and likely many outside prognosticators’ choice — to break through.
Yet some stealth skepticism remains, particularly among players.
If the Thunder crash out of the playoffs this spring, it’ll be because of these factors (or a combination of them).
-They’re still too young
The Thunder are still the second-youngest team in the NBA, with an average age of 24.7 years old. We haven’t seen a team on such a precocious timeline tear through the postseason and win the title since…the 2014-15 Warriors?
Youth and inexperience can show up in May and June. The games slow down. The stakes elevate. The attention microscopes. If the Thunder, under those circumstances, play just 10% worse on both ends, they become beatable.
-SGA won’t get the same calls
It’d be shocking if Gilgeous-Alexander got to the foul line as easily as he does in the regular season. He’s far from the most egregious foul-hunter, but he’s still a culprit of jerking his body into defenders and whipping his head back to get calls.
In a best-of-seven series, teams learn each other’s tendencies. So do the officials. The less often they get fooled by Gilgeous-Alexander’s tricks, the harder it’ll be for him to get his 30. Gilgeous-Alexander attempts 8.9 foul shots per game, second in the league behind Giannis Antetokoumpo. What does his game look like if that declines to six or seven?
-Jalen Williams isn’t enough secondary shot-creating
Last year in the playoffs, Williams wilted. He’s the Thunder’s best chance at relieving the offensive burden off Gilgeous-Alexander, and he’ll need to be more up to the task. Consider the other second bananas in the West: Jamal Murray, Jimmy Butler, LeBron James and Jaren Jackson Jr..
When defenses load up on slowing Gilgeous-Alexander, will Williams be able to make them pay?
-Rebounding
The only weakness Oklahoma City has is on the glass. Even when they went with double bigs against Boston, the Celtics punished them with offensive rebounds. The Thunder rank 14th in the league in rebounding. When every possession is heightened in a series, losing the shot attempt battle is costly.
-One of the Championship DNA teams become buzz saws
The Nuggets, Lakers and Warriors are going to be Oklahoma City’s biggest tests. None will be afraid of the Thunder, and they all have far more experience. And as excellent as Gilgeous-Alexander has been this season, he might not be the best player in a series against any one of those three teams if they catch Luka Doncic, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic or James when they’re rolling.
The NBA has its order of operations backwards
A frenzied NFL free agency this week served as a reminder that the NBA has got its offseason backwards. Unlike the NFL, they do the draft before free agency.
In football, teams address their needs with veterans and then know what positions or skill-sets they need to target in the draft. It makes much more sense from a team-building perspective and is easier for fans to follow along.
Why does the NBA do it this way? As far as I understand it, just because that’s always how they’ve done it. Tradition for tradition’s sake.
I couldn’t think of any potential pitfalls of shifting to the NFL format, opening free agency a week before the NBA Draft. To make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I polled multiple people in various roles around the game. The best answer I got was that some free agents might want to sign with a team after they drafted a promising rookie like Victor Wembanyama. Even that’s a pretty huge outlier.
There’s been some chatter recently about fixing the NBA’s schedule. Why not start there?
Warriors have Bradley Beal to thank
It’s easy to forget now, but Jimmy Butler wanted to go to Phoenix. The Heat would have sent him there, too, if not for the fact that the only player the Suns had to trade was Bradley Beal, who has one of two no-trade clauses in the NBA.
The Heat weren’t interested in Beal, and Beal likely not interested in waiving his no-trade clause, opening a path for the Warriors to swoop in and acquire Butler for 25 cents on the dollar.
Thanks, Brad Beal (and his agent, Mark Bartelstein).
A list of injuries screwing up the stretch run
LeBron James, Jalen Brunson, Jaren Jackson Jr., Kristaps Porzingis, Aaron Gordon and the entire Dallas Mavericks roster. Turn injuries off next season.