Synchronized winning
Offense premised on adjustment, so D’Antoni uses whatever works
Mike D’Antoni was not invited to the University of Houston training facility to check out the Thunder practice. Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan did not call the Rockets coach. The game plan will not be left on the Toyota Center court after shootaround.
But the Rockets would not do anything differently had the Thunder decided to share than if they find out with everyone else.
The Rockets would have accepted the intelligence and probably taken a few minutes to chat about how the Thunder planned to defend them in Wednesday’s Game 2 of the NBA first-round playoff series. But they would do what they plan to do, anyway, which is a large part of the plan of D’Antoni’s offense.
“Our adjustment,” Rockets guard Pat Beverley said, “is adjusting to their adjustments.”
The Thunder will no doubt tweak some of the
defense, since changing things up for Game 1 following their regularseason contests met with a 118-87 loss. Game 2 over the years has been called “the adjustment game.” The Thunder will seek to do some things differently and, as Donovan suggested, just try to execute some of Sunday’s plan better than they did in Game 1.
But the Rockets consider their offensive adjustments to be an ongoing process of reading and reacting, attacking when an opponent defends the arc, moving the ball to shooters when the defense protects the lane and letting James Harden probe and choose no matter what an opponent tries.
“James, so far as a point guard, he’s seen every kind of defense possible,” D’Antoni said. “They’ll come up with one of those. It might be a little different from last game. Whatever it is, he’ll read the situation and it’ll open up something else.”
Focus on Harden
In Game 1, the Thunder often switched big men to defend Harden. They kept defenders on the Rockets’ shooters, with forwards Trevor Ariza and Ryan Anderson combining to take five errant 3-pointers between them.
With so many Oklahoma City players stationed 24 feet from the basket, Harden found he could get to the rim without concern that defenders could get there to interfere.
Because the Rockets call plays roughly as often as they take midrange jumpers, they start most possessions the same way and then let how they read the defense take it from there. Their offense is about making the adjustments that are so much a part of postseason conversation in real time, rather than between games.
“We want to play the same way every game,” Anderson said. “If a team wants to take us away from our 3-point shots, we’re going to get points in the paint. Obviously, Nene and Clint (Capela) and James going to the basket, they did a great job taking advantage of that. If they want to focus more on stopping us in the paint, it’s just going to open up our shooting. We’re a tough team to guard. If they want to make those adjustments, that’s our normal way of playing, anyway.
“Either way, we’re going to score. We just have to read it, you know? I’m sure they’re going to throw a couple different versions of our defense at us. They might trap James. They might switch. They might do a number of different things, but we’ve seen it all and we’re ready.”
Just take what’s given
In the final regularseason meeting of the two teams, the Thunder typically helped on Harden, either with big men “showing” on screens and then retreating into the lane or by having an extra defender slide into position to help. Harden moved the ball and his teammates rolled to the Rockets’ topscoring half of the season and made 20 3s on 51.3 percent shooting.
In Game 1, the Thunder stayed tight on those scorers, opening the way for Harden to go to work on his way to 37 points and nine assists. The Rockets had 62 points in the paint.
“We just take what the defense gives us,” said Ariza, who had 24 points and six assists against Oklahoma City in March but took four shots Sunday. “We have a lot of variables to our offense. Their emphasis was to not let our shooters shoot, to keep a body close to us. That opened up the paint. If teams do that, that’ll open up our bigs and point guard to get in the paint and make layups, which is totally fine.
“You know in the playoffs, teams will make adjustments. Our offense is predicated on what you do. It’s not about us making adjustments. It’s about taking advantage of what you give us.”
‘We’ll figure it out’
Still, the Thunder can consider their 3-point defense Sunday a success, with the Rockets making 10 of 33 attempts. OKC could stick with what worked, tweak what did not and make the Rockets wait to find out. Either way, the Rockets did not seem curious.
“That’s all our offense is about, reading what the defense gives us and just take it,” Harden said. “Last game, they did a really good job of taking away our 3s. Just tried to get into the paint and get layups.
“If they change, we have to counter what they do. We’ll figure it out once the game starts.”