Billy Donovan sticks with Carmelo Anthony as Game 6 starter
Billy Donovan is among the NBA’s most verbose coaches, but there’s one question he almost always answers succinctly.
Donovan sometimes is asked before a game if he’ll stick with his same starting lineup. If the answer is affirmative, it’s a quick “Yes.” No need to elaborate.
He did it again before Friday’s Game 6 of Oklahoma City’s Western Conference first-round playoff series with the Utah Jazz. This time, some Thunder fans were hanging on his answer.
Despite his team’s strong play with Carmelo Anthony on the bench in Game 5, Donovan kept the 33-yearold veteran in the starting lineup for Game 6.
It wasn’t a surprising move. Anthony has played 1,054 regular-season NBA games and 71 more in the playoffs and he’s never come off the bench. He started all 78 games he played for the Thunder this season and the first five games of the series that Utah led 3-2 entering Friday night.
Still, there was curiosity in some corners of Thunder fandom about whether Donovan might send Anthony to the bench, and his playing time was a guaranteed talking point on Friday. In Wednesday’s 10799 win, OKC rallied from 25 points down with a 32-7 run in the third quarter, most of it with Anthony on the sideline.
Complicating the Anthony playing-time decision was Jerami Grant’s strong play in the series.
Entering Friday’s games, Grant ranked 10th among players in the playoffs in on/off net rating. The Thunder entered Friday outscoring the Jazz by 9.2 points per 100 possessions in the series with Grant on the floor and being outscored by 15.2 with him off it.
Grant replaced Anthony with 5:57 to play in the first quarter of Friday’s game. In the first half, Oklahoma City outscored Utah by four points with Grant on the floor, and the Jazz outscored the Thunder by eight in Anthony’s 17 minutes.
During ESPN’s broadcast of the game, sideline reporter Israel Gutierrez said Donovan prefers Grant on the floor when the Jazz plays Jae Crowder at power forward and likes Anthony’s matchup with Derrick Favors.
As for how he manages Anthony’s sitting Anthony, Gutierrez reported that Donovan discussed it with the veteran forward and said, “When you’re direct with Melo, he may not like it, and he’ll tell you doesn’t like it, but at least we’re on the same page.”
Major minutes
Russell Westbrook played 44 minutes in Wednesday’s Game 5. The Thunder point guard — who hadn’t played more than 37 minutes in any of the first four games of the series — wasn’t concerned about it heading into Game 6.
“Being tired is something, for me, I always think it’s a mental thing,” Westbrook said.
“People tell themselves you’re tired, then you’re tired. If not, then you’re not. That’s just how I feel personally. I feel like I’ve conditioned myself in the summertime and offseason to know when it’s time, I better go into another gear. Being tired is just a mental thing.”
Screen saver
Though he finished with six points on 2-for-6 shooting in Game 5, Steven
Adams added significant value to the Thunder’s offense, a trend OKC hoped to see continue in Game 6.
In Game 5, Adams had 16 screen assists, defined as a screen for a teammate that leads directly to a field goal for that teammate. Adams averaged 4.8 screen assists per game in the regular season, second in the NBA to Utah’s Rudy Gobert, who averaged 6.1.
Adams is widely considered one of the top screen-setters in the NBA, and Paul George said he “has a different chemistry with Russ than he has with me” in terms of how each player likes his screens and figures out both.
“He’s a heck of a screener and he understands angles and he’s a physical guy,” Utah coach
Quin Snyder told reporters before Friday’s game. “In a good way, we have a ton of respect for how he plays. And that’s one of the ways that he impacts the game.”