OKC embraces creative playing style
The Oklahoma City Thunder has a unique playing style that allows players to show off their talent and creativity.
Paul George will tell you himself: He struggles with one of the foundational pieces of basketball.
“I’ve never in my career been a guy that’s been good at a play call,” George told The Oklahoman on Monday. “I’m a guy that likes to play random where defense doesn’t know what’s coming.”
If this wasn’t readily apparent, Thunder coach Billy Donovan is OK with that. Since arriving in Oklahoma City in 2015, amid play calls, Donovan has tried to implement a malleable offense to his players’ approval.
The result is an oftrepeated word around the Thunder this preseason: Random. The style can have a negative connotation, but how it’s executed is as important as the intention behind it.
“I think that’s where I’m at my best, when I can kind of manipulate and I’ve got something in my head that I know the other team’s not thinking about,” George said.
“That’s when I’m at my best, when I can just play and not be mindful of ‘Coach called a play for me, I’ve got to get a shot. I’ve got to make a play.’ Just let it happen naturally.”
A criticism of the Thunder in its history has been that natural approach. The abilities of Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Kevin Durant were encouraged and trumpeted over the structure of a defined system. When a play broke down, more often than not isolation has the go-to, and one-onone can dry up against elite defenses.
But within a play call, there can be multiple options that allow a player to still have spontaneity. That’s the randomness George likes, and Donovan encourages.
“You’ll have a concept or a play that they’re playing from, but the ball can get passed to a couple of different people, they’ll make a couple of different cuts, or there’s several different reads,” Donovan said.
“They’re playing off what the defense is doing instead of saying ‘Here’s the play and we’re going from A to B to C to D, and this how we’re doing it and we need to execute.’”
It actually parallels what has become a Westbrook postgame staple, whether it’s the Thunder point guard being coy or not: Reading the game, taking what the defense gives you.
Raymond Felton defined it as “reading off what the point guard does, pushing the ball in transition, not calling a play, ball movement, getting into the paint, and generating easy shots.” But it’s not as simple as rolling the ball out.
If randomness is going to work, there have to be other well-executed components, especially if the Thunder — one of the league’s most isolationreliant teams last season — is going to generate more ball movement.
“Guys are going to have to cut and move hard,” said Donovan, a test for the Thunder without Andre Roberson, one of the league’s most frequent cutters last season. “I think that if you do that and you’re not cutting and moving hard, it becomes a little more challenging.”
It’s part of why the Thunder is stressing speed of play and decision making more in preseason. The Thunder’s offense stalled and couldn’t play out of Utah’s grasp in the first round of the playoffs in April. The Jazz is elite defensively, but forced the Thunder into the playoffs’ third-worst offensive rating (102.9) after OKC was a Top 10 offense in the regular season.
It’s why Thunder general manager Sam Presti didn’t scoff when assistant Darko Rajakovic brought up the concept of randomness in preseason. Rajakovic didn’t mean randomness in an uncontrolled or unplanned manner.
“Not just random play, but creative play,” Presti said.
The next step is creative consistency, and randomness resulting in more than isolation with inefficient results.
“I’m not good when it comes down to ‘I’ve got the ball, I’ve got to make this play,’” George said. “The defense knows what I’m doing. That’s when it becomes a little stagnant for me. I like to come down and just go, and let my creativity — let my talent — take over, and play basketball.”