Oftentimes the Thunder coaching staff will look at a stretch of the season and assess a set of games as a group. When the team returned from California on Thursday, Head Coach Billy Donovan and his staff got to work assessing the four games played on the front of this six-game road haul that the Thunder is in the midst of.
With four days in between its last game in Golden State and Monday’s tilt against the Utah Jazz, the Thunder broke down areas for improvement, and came away with a main focal point: consistency. There are times in games that the Thunder has played up to its level, the standard that leaders like Russell Westbrook set. There have been other times where that has not been the case.
“We’ve had periods of time where we’ve played exceptional basketball and then times where we need to play and can play better than we have,” Donovan said. “It’s constantly putting in front of our team the consistency of both ends of the floor, offensively and defensively.”
Thunder Talk: Coach Donovan - 1/21</strong
One of the most critical areas that the Thunder wants to address is turnovers, which haven’t been an issue for most of the season, but became a problem that reared its head on the road. Limiting live-ball giveaways is vital for the Thunder to prevent fast break points and easy shot attempts that are practically defenseless.
“You don’t want to take things for granted,” Donovan added. “We’ve had a long stretch where we did a really good job of taking care of the ball and then we’ve had games where we haven’t done a great job of taking care of the basketball. Certainly, those things come back and they hurt you.”
Donovan also, however, highlighted the timing of turnovers and how those can impact the game. Flow, rhythm, mentality and emotion all play a factor in the game, so turnovers that come immediately after a hard-fought stop can at times be the most devastating.
“Instead of getting a stop and getting the ball down and getting a good shot off, turning the ball back over does away with the hard work you put in on defense,” Donovan added.
So how does the Thunder address these issues with no games? It gets to work, diligently spending hours on the floor to play through offensive sets and defensive coverages and in the film room dissecting where passes are open and where they’re not available.
“It’s really focusing on practice. We lost games we feel like we should have won,” guard Anthony Morrow noted. “We just have to lock in on some things and clean some things up. There’s no better way to do that than practice. Everybody came in focused today and locked in.”
Thunder Talk: Enes Kanter - 1/21</strong
While the x’s and o’s certainly count, the number one thing that the Thunder has to be consistent with on the floor each night is its energy and effort. Those are rarely, if ever, issues for Donovan’s ball club, but sometimes that energy and effort needs to be directed in certain specific ways. In a lot of games, being the aggressor can solve a lot of problems.
“It’s just being more physical. Sometimes it’s just going out and competing at a high level,” Westbrook said. “That’s the biggest thing you can do on the road. The basketball stuff will take care of itself.”