As the Thunder’s second unit checked into the game on Monday night in Portland, Head Coach Mark Daigneault called out from the sideline, telling his squad that it didn’t matter who brought the ball up the floor or who got the offense initiated.
Looking around at the group on the court – Hamidou Diallo, Kenrich Williams, Justin Jackson, Aleksej Pokuševski and Mike Muscala, there was no clear primary ballhandler. Rookie point guard Théo Maledon was bumped into the starting lineup for the first time in his career with George Hill sidelined with a sprained thumb, giving Daigneault the intriguing opportunity to see how a re-mixed, position-less bench unit would look. In a nail-biting 125-122 win over the Northwest Division rival Trail Blazers, the Thunder’s second unit stood and delivered.
“They really trusted the pass offensively tonight,” said Daigneault. “That was a really connected group when they were out there. The ball really moved. They made simple plays and got each other involved and put each other in advantages. Then defensively they did the same thing. They brought an edge to that side of the ball.”
“It's just a tribute to their readiness, their willingness to connect to the team and have the whole be better than the sum of the parts,” Daigneault continued.
The most veteran member of that second group, Muscala, helped open up the floor for everyone else in the first half by knocking down five of his career-high six-made 3-pointers before the break. Just one day before in Los Angeles, Muscala went 1-for-9 from behind the arc against the Clippers. Before Monday’s game, the Thunder’s third in four nights during a five-game west coast road swing, Muscala noted that he wanted to bend lower and get his legs more into his shot. He came with the purpose-driven mindset, got his body prepared, and fired confidently as a trail man, on pick and pops and in the corner for 23 points – a season-high and one point shy of a career-best.
“He models the type of approach that we want to get in the water here – prepare the best you can and then get to zero-to-zero for every game,” Daigneault noted. “He certainly, from a mental toughness standpoint, exhibited that tonight.”
“When you're touching the ball, when you're getting into actions and then when you space out and you get the ball back and you get into another action, you get an open shot,” Muscala said. “You just feel in a good rhythm offensively.”
In the second half the Blazers put some game pressure on the Thunder, even re-taking the lead in the opening possessions of the fourth quarter. Down by one, it was Pokuševski who nailed a go-ahead 3 on the left wing, giving the Thunder the lead for good. The 19-year-old rookie, the youngest player in the league, has not shot the ball well so far this season but led the team in steals and blocks combined heading into Monday’s game, giving him the confidence and trust of his teammates in a big moment.
“Poku has been coming along really well. Tonight he really showed his defensive strengths,” said center Isaiah Roby.
The 3 from the Serbian 7-footer sparked an 11-3 Thunder run in a two-minute span to re-establish control. The spurt included Muscala running the floor hard and scoring through contact. Then it was a pair of free throws from Jackson after Williams snagged an offensive rebound, connecting a pair of players who early in the season were a part of the Thunder’s “Breakfast Club”– a group of guys who weren’t in the rotation so went to practice early to play 3-on-3.
“I'm always rooting for Breakfast Club,” said Roby, a card-carrying member of that club who made his sixth-straight start tonight but is intermittently a part of the bench unit. “It was great to see them go out there, hold the lead and extend the lead for us.”
“It was really good basketball overall by them,” Roby continued. “They were driving, kicking, drawing guys and finding the open shooter. Coach can’t be anything but happy with the shots that they were getting.”
After a deflection and strong rebound by Pokuševski on back-to-back defensive possessions came a pair of hard-charging drives by the ferocious Diallo, who can “smell the rim” according to Daigneault. Diallo has been the Thunder’s bench spark plug consistently all year, ranking 13th in the league in total points off the bench, averaging a career-best 11.2 points per game on 52.8 percent shooting thanks to his physical, attacking style.
“You try to put as much pressure on the defense so they’re not relaxing and they don’t know what we’re doing,” Diallo said. “It’s just something that I bring to the game and something we have to keep doing to make the offense flow a little smoother for us.”
That spurt broke the game open and helped cement the Thunder bench’s command in the game, as it outscored Portland’s 53-34 while shooting 20-for-36 (55.6 percent) from the floor including 8-of-19 (42.1 percent) from 3 with nine assists to just one turnover.
As the Thunder moves forward along its pathway of establishing a sustainable style of play that can be relied upon as players mature and grow, being a team that has a personality of attacking and sharing the ball from all five positions is a crucial goal. A team that is unpredictable and can flow randomly into offense from any spot is the most difficult to scheme against.
“Those guys are skilled players. The traditional positions don’t really apply to a lot of the players on our team,” said Daigneault. “Those guys are basketball players. We were more concerned with our pace tonight and getting off early and playing through advantages.”
In a couple nights against Phoenix or sometime down the line, the Thunder’s second unit might not be as sharp as it was tonight. Shots might not fall, which may shine a light on some areas for improvement. But just as the Thunder knows that growth isn’t linear, it celebrates the ticks forward – those victories inside the game, regardless of whether it was actually a victory or a defeat. Tonight, it got both types of wins.