SGA's rebounding has ripple effect
The reporter delivered the question with a chuckle at the end, but Thunder coach Billy Donovan wasn't ready to laugh at the truth behind it.
“Aren't you the one team that's better in half-court than transition?” David Lock, the radio voice of the Utah Jazz, asked from the pregame media scrum.
“We are t hat way, yes,” Donovan said with an ervous smile. “Which, we need to pick up the other end, no question.”
It was early December in Salt Lake City, and the
Thunder was at the beginning of what would become a 22-9 post- Thanksgiving record, the third-best in the NBA. But before the holiday, OKC had stumbled to 6-11. The Thunder was moving the ball like it hadn't in years, but it had forfeited its transition offense. OKC was in the bottom five in the league in transition points, scoring just 16 per game before Thanksgiving, according to
NBA.com. Donovan was looking for more efficiency.
In recent games, an uptick in pace has come from an unlikely source: point guard Sh ai Gil geo us-Alexander, who is well aware of his limitations in end-to-end speed. But by increasing his rebounding numbers, Gilgeous-Alexander has pushed t he Thunder's pace on offense without that straight-line speed.
“It' s just easier once a guard rebounds ,” GilgeousAlexander said .“We can get out (in transition) instead of having to pass it to an outlet and then run the floor. It's like skipping a step.”
It started with a conversation between Gilgeous-Alexander and Thunder assistant Brian Keefe before OKC's 117-104 win at Minnesota on Jan. 13.
“Coach just challenged me before the game to fill up the stat sheet ,” Gil geousAlexander said on the Fox Sports Oklahoma t el ecast, after logging 20 points ,20 rebounds and 10 assists.
His rebounding n umbe rs have remained high. Gilgeous-Alexander entered the Thunder' s game at Sacramento late Wednesday night averaging 9.3 rebounds in the last nine games, beginning with that career- high performance at Minnesota. In five of those games, he has recorded double-digit rebounds.
Compare that to the first 39 games of the season, when Gil geo us-Alexander was averaging 5.3 rebounds per game and logged double-digit rebounds just once.
“Because the NBA has changed so much,” Donovan said earlier this month, “and there's more 3s going up, the idea of traditional rebounding with your power forward and your center has kind of gone out the window. … Guards are having to go in and rebound a lot more, so the more rebounds Chris Paul gets, Dennis (Schroder) gets, Shai gets, it definitely ignites us in the break, it allows us to play with more pace, and it gets us in transition. So, there's definitely a correlation.”
The Thunder's pace has increased from 99.21 possessions per 48 minutes before Gilgeous-Alexander's 20-rebound game, to 100.39 in the next nine games.
“We are a team that started off t he season playing real slow,” Thunder center Nerlens Noel said. “So, we wanted to get the pace up a little bit, get more shots up. So, when Shai gets that rebound and he's out, it starts our whole offense.”
The Thunder's offense still relies on ball movement, but it is no longer a bottom dweller in transition points. A subtle shift from 16 points per game to 16.8 sent OKC up the tightly packed rankings to No. 20.