Thunderstruck: Oklahoma City Storms Back In Game 1

This might come off as a nice piece of trolling on Bosh’s part, but he’s probably telling the truth. At a certain point, loud is loud. It doesn’t matter if Oklahoma City has the ‘loudest’ fans if even the 11th loudest building in the NBA is so loud that players can’t hear each other on the court.

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A couple of things here: everything is based on possessions, not points. So ‘two made 2-pointers’ looks the same as ‘two made 3-pointers.’ Also, because of this, two missed free throws in the box score is represented by one missed free throw possession on this chart, a simplified estimate that there are two FTs per FT possession.

The first thing that sticks out: the turnover situation reversed completely. Miami had one in the first quarter (allowing them more shots), and three in each quarter thereafter. Oklahoma City had eight in the first half and two in the second half.

Miami led through the majority of the first three quarters on Tuesday night and then, with the game’s results hanging in the balance, Durant took over. James has vowed to change that, however, as detailed in a column from Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen.

No, in this switch, only the fans really win -- the two best players in the game will be defending each other in the NBA Finals. Ah, basketball.

Wade did take on additional ball-handler duties, picking up eight assists. But as we saw regularly during the East finals, Wade is really struggling to get back on transition defense. Against the Thunder, that’s murder. Oklahoma City ended up with 24 fast break points against the Heat in Game 1 despite just 10 turnovers (a very low number) by Miami. Wade struggled to get back into defensive position to stop the ball even (or especially) on missed shots.

Again, Wade’s the only superstar in this series with a ring. He knows how difficult it is to win on the biggest stage against the best opponents. He needs to be better for Miami to triumph.

A seven-man rotation coming off of a seven-game series seems like it certainly could have been an issue like Fernandez wrote, but he provided further evidence from James at the post-game press conference, ensuring us that it wasn’t a factor (while saying yes it was, kind of).

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the rotations going forward because, if James and Wade are counted on to play as many minutes as they did on Tuesday night, it’ll be awfully difficult for them to keep up the energy later in this series.

Still, one suspects the battle of the superstars to be relatively even over the course of the series. Durant and Westbrook won Game 1, but James and Wade will be be back and they’ll win their individual duels plenty of times this series. Where Oklahoma City has what appears to be a sustainable advantage is in its supporting cast.

Durant and James (46 minutes each in Game 1), Westbrook and Wade (42 minutes each) are all clearly going to play huge minutes in the series. But look at the rest of the rotation for each team.

Figured that’d be your reaction, guys.

(via @bomani_jones).

The Heat tried, they really did. But in the end, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant were too good. Miami defended the Thunder well in three of four critical defensive possessions, but Durant spoiled two by drawing a foul and finding Nick Collison for a dunk on a beautiful pass, and Westbrook spoiled one with a tough fadeaway over Dwyane Wade’s outstretched arm after the Heat shut off the pass to Durant.

Too good, really. The Heat did all they could, but the Thunder were better.

Major credit to the Oklahoma City Thunder: their defense has been great, and this lineup they’ve played with Nick Collison as the only big man has been great. But man, the Miami Heat have to do better offensively. Their crunch-time offense has been filled with isolations, which has allowed the Thunder to load up their defense to the ball.

Where’s the motion we saw in the first half?

Welp, looks like the ball is stuck on top of the backboard. Guess this game can’t continue.

(via @jon_bois)

It’ll be interesting to see how the Oklahoma City Thunder finish this game off. Their offense is getting good looks, but Miami has made a key adjustment, putting LeBron James on Russell Westbrook, switching every ball screen and having James, Shane Battier and Chris Bosh take turns guarding Westbrook. Westbrook has so far made strong decisions, but the onus will be on him to keep doing that.

After falling in love with missed jumpers, the Miami Heat have started to attack the Oklahoma City Thunder defense off the dribble again. The goal: get to the free-throw line and slow this game down. It’s working, even though a couple of the foul calls have been questionable.

With the Miami Heat down by three, LeBron James drove, drew defenders and dropped a pass off to Chris Bosh. Bosh fumbled the pass, though, and Kevin Durant got a dunk on the other end.

That’s a big swing there.

Snap out of it, Dwyane.

Russell Westbrook was not very good in the first half, but things changed drastically in that third quarter. He was 2-9 at halftime, but was 5-7 in that third quarter, slashing to the rim and breaking down the Heat’s defense. He’s the major reason Oklahoma City now leads by one after three quarters.

The Heat have to clean up their pick-and-roll defense, because Westbrook is killing it. Dwyane Wade has defended Westbrook most of the time, and he’s taking poor angles to try to cut Westbrook off. Miami’s help defenders aren’t helping either, as they’re not plugging the middle well enough. Westbrook is splitting the pick-and-roll and getting right to the basket, like so.

The Thunder’s ace sixth man has just five points on six shots, and now, he has four fouls. His defensive effort has been lazy all night, as he’s reached too much, failed to slide his feet and was caught ball-watching when his man didn’t have the ball.

Still, he’s James Harden, so his absence will be significant. Will the Heat start to guard Russell Westbrook better now that they don’t have to worry about Harden? It’s a good question.

Kendrick Perkins is a warrior, a team leader and a guy who is tough as nails. He’s also killing the Thunder, because with him in the game, the Heat can afford to rest LeBron James on defense.

Once again, it’s time for the Thunder to go small. Or, if they’re going to go big, play Nick Collison, not Perkins.

After a poor series against against the Celtics, Dwyane Wade is 4-13 in Game 1 against the Thunder, settling for jumpers and playing poor defense on Russell Westbrook in the third quarter. When is he going to emerge? Will it ever happen?

The other reason the Thunder have gotten back into this game is that they’ve taken a page out of the Heat’s defensive playbook. Much like Miami, Oklahoma City is starting to switch screens, disrupting the Heat’s flow and forcing them to try to go one-on-one to exploit the mismatches. Seeing as LeBron James is more interested in surveying that driving right now, it’s working.

Finally, the Thunder’s defense has arrived, and it’s mostly been in the form of Thabo Sefolosha. The Thunder guard has started to step up his defensive pressure, jumping into passing lanes to make it impossible for the Heat to rotate the ball as crisply as they did in the first half.

It’s about time for that aggressive Thunder defense to arrive. Maybe they just needed a quarter and a half to find their legs.

The Thunder’s defense is still an issue, but I think their offense has started to figure Miami out. For one thing, as discussed in our series preview, the Thunder have been successful using Durant off baseline curls, both to get Durant points and to free others for open shots. For another, Russell Westbrook has started to calm down and has made a couple nice decisions to find teammates on the pick and roll.

The Thunder will need to step it up defensively to put a bigger dent into the Heat’s lead, but they’re starting to make a run.

(via @cjzero).

(Via Eye On Basketball).

Don’t you love the NBA Finals?

(Via @NBA)

The Miami Heat have hit too many jump shots for this to matter yet, but in the rare instances where they’ve missed, they’ve struggled to match up with the Thunder in transition. The Heat’s decision to go with some odd defensive matchups has opened up their transition offense, but in the process, it’s hurt their transition defense. The Thunder have begun to get good shots on the break in this second quarter, mostly because the Heat have taken too long to find their men.

It now becomes extremely important for the Thunder to force the Heat to shoot jumpers and contest those shots well. Missed Heat jumpers will spur a Thunder comeback, but the Thunder have to force them.