With day two of training camp in the books, the Thunder is one step closer in establishing its offensive and defensive identities. New personnel offer new opportunities for tactics when it comes to coverages like pick-and-roll defense and guarding mismatches. With new personnel comes the importance of communication between players on the floor in order to continue to learn and adapt within the team’s on-court blueprint. “First thing is communicating and being on the same page. We have great, great athletes and defense is going to make the difference for us,” said forward Danilo Gallinari.
The second day of camp gave the squad a chance to dig a little deeper into those defensive looks, testing out various coverages with different player combinations. “I think just based on who you’re playing against and your opponent, you’ve got to be able to do multiple things,” said Head Coach Billy Donovan. “I don’t think you can just play with one defense. You got to be able to do multiple things. And actually, that was part of the stuff that we did defensively today. We worked on some coverages yesterday and worked on different coverages today.” Players like Andre Roberson, Chris Paul and Terrance Ferguson can offer their noted defensive prowess in the back court to help disrupt well-oiled offenses and force turnovers with Steven Adams as the defensive anchor in the paint. “I think we’ve got guys that don’t necessarily have the kind of length that maybe we had last year, but hopefully getting Andre back helps with some of that,” Donovan said. “Terrance, I think, has always been a really good defender. He gives great effort, he’s a year older. Hopefully he gets better from that. Chris Paul’s been on the all-defensive team and he’s very, very smart and bright and a physical defensive player.” “So, we have guys that maybe do it in a little bit of a different way, but I still think that’s got to be our goal, to establish an identity defensively. Steven is really good anchoring a defense and he obviously gives you rim protection and he gives you size at the basket. So, I think that that’s something that we got to keep building out as they get more and more comfortable playing with one another.”
Another key element on the defensive end is covering sharp shooters. With the growth of players in the league who only need an ounce of daylight to get a shot off, having the weapons to go over screens and obstruct the shooter’s view has become more and more critical. “If you look on paper, we’ve got really good guards who can get over screens, willing defenders, all that stuff on paper.” Adams said. “But it just matters about the actual structure of the defense itself, and how well people play on a string together in terms of what we’re going to be good at defensively. But to say what are we going to be good at, we’re working on our own stuff. This is our foundation point.” The first two days of training camp have given players the chance to learn tendencies and begin to establish rapport on the floor. Although there is still intrigue surrounding player combinations and defensive schemes, the first steps have been made toward establishing a Thunder defensive identity.
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