Finding Good Looks for Durant
Here is an article written by Kevin Arnovitz for the TrueHoop blog on ESPN.com. It has been reposted numerous places, but I thought that instead of writing something up myself, this guy could explain the offense a bit better. With the Thunder currently on a losing streak, I felt like this was very relevant. Who wants to hear about the problems when we’re winning?
Prior to Saturday night’s game between Cleveland and Oklahoma City, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s Brian Windhorst wrote:
I believe the Durant-LeBron matchup could be better than the Kobe-LeBron matchup tonight and for years to come. Durant is a high efficiency scorer, he gets to the line at a high rate, shoots at a high rate and he rebounds better than Kobe. At this point in his career, at least this season because of injuries, Kobe has turned into a volume scorer on a lot of nights. Durant, and James for that matter, aren’t. That is why I predict a quality duel.
True to Windhorst’s forecast, the mano-a-mano battle was captivating. The two scorers combined for 71 points in a seesaw affair that saw five lead changes in a scintillating fourth quarter. A battle that was waged in the interior for three quarters — and dominated by Shaquille O’Neal for much of that time — moved further out to the perimeter in the fourth.
For all of Durant’s uptick in efficiency (a PER of 24.58, vs. 20.85 last season), the Thunder have been winning basketball games this season on the strength 
of their defense, and we saw Oklahoma City make some gritty stands down the stretch. There’s a reason it took some huge shot-making by Daniel Gibson for the Cavs to put Oklahoma City away at the Q — the Thunder clogged the middle, as they’ve been doing all season.
But just as we’re not hearing enough about Oklahoma City’s defense amidst the celebratory praise of everyone’s favorite youth movement, there’s not much discussion of this:
The Thunder have trouble scoring points.
In fact, only nine teams in the League have more trouble.
While that’s a marked improvement from last season, when only the Clippers were worse than the Thunder in offensive efficiency, it’s a little bit of a head-scratcher for a team blessed with a matchup nightmare like Durant.
Saturday night during the tight fourth quarter, we got a glimpse of the Thunder’s struggles when they went more than five minutes without draining a shot from the field. There was a particularly ghastly stretch of seven possessions over which Oklahoma City generated only a single point on a Durant free throw.
What happened to the Thunder in those moments? Was Durant not finding shots he likes? Was it something akin to what the Lakers or Cavs experience at times when the other four guys on the floor stand around watching Bryant or James? Was Durant forcing the issue? Not forcing it enough?
finish the article here…
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/12524/finding-good-looks-for-kevin-durant
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