Breakdown: Durant's turnover issues could doom Thunder vs. Warriors
Kevin Durant has struggled with taking care of the ball and it's not good enough against a team like the Warriors
By
Zach Harper
•
7 min read
A coin flip.
That's what the Oklahoma City Thunder's chances are this year when Kevin Durant is sloppy with the ball. He's had 28 games between the regular season and the playoffs in which he's turned the ball over at least five times. Only James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and John Wall had more games with more turnovers. When Durant is this careless with the ball, the Thunder are 14-14. They're 9-11 when he does this against playoff teams. They're 4-3 when he's done this in the postseason. They're 1-1 against the Golden State Warriors in this series.
Maybe a coin flip is good enough most nights, but you need to skew the odds in your favor as much as possible against a pretty healthy Warriors team. Grabbing three wins in the next five games is going to be quite the task for the Thunder. Their impressive run throughout the playoffs so far has fueled them from being a team we question in terms of mental toughness to a team we consider being capable of pulling off a historic upset. However, Game 2 showed just how fragile that balance can be against Stephen Curry when he goes on a flurry of buckets.
In order to increase the odds for the Thunder, they need Durant to be a killer -- an efficient killer at that. They can't afford to waste possessions against this Warriors team. Limiting yourself to four turnovers at the most doesn't seem like too outrageous of a goal, and the Thunder were 47-10 this season (including playoffs) when Durant finished below five turnovers in a game.
Their sloppiness with the ball in Game 1 happened early, and when they took control of making sure shots went up on their end of the floor instead of giving the ball away, it was enough to steal the first game of the series. In Game 2, they could never reel it in, and it cost them a chance of having history on their side when they went back to Oklahoma City.
Durant's five turnovers led to eight Warriors points in Game 1 and the Thunder survived. His eight turnovers in Game 2 led to 12 points and the Thunder perished. The majority of these turnovers have come from Durant rushing through his progressions like a quarterback hearing footsteps in the pocket. He knows the Warriors are going to send multiple defenders at him.
"They were sending three guys," Durant said after the Game 2 loss when asked why his shots were so limited in the second half. "I was trying to make the right pass. I was turning the ball over playing the crowd. So maybe I just got to shoot over three people."
The Warriors have been consistently swarming Durant when he's in playmaking situations and it's worked out for them. These turnovers off his passes through the first two games look like the work of someone uncomfortable on the court.
So many of these turnovers look like poor decisions instead of calculated gambles. Lazy one-hand passes. His body is turned away from the target of his intended pass. Throwing hero darts that end up hurting his own team.
The first play in that video is an attempted pocket pass to Steven Adams. There are two big problems with the passing decision. First, he doesn't actually lead Adams on the pass. Adams is getting ready to roll to the rim on the pick-and-roll. Maybe it's the pressure of Andrew Bogut that keeps Durant from leading his teammate, but he ends up throwing the ball in front of him. Lead him toward the restricted area and you're at least getting a trip to the free-throw line.
The second problem is there are three defenders swarming the play. Andre Iguodala is pestering Durant with Bogut, but Steph Curry is also cheating off Russell Westbrook to help. I'm not sure Durant ever sees Curry coming in to poach the pass, and it ends up going the other way pretty quickly.
The pass where Durant is trying to feed Serge Ibaka with a lob over the top while Iguodala is fronting the big man was just an insane decision for KD to make. Durant is standing in Steph Curry warmup range -- roughly 10-12 feet behind the 3-point line -- when he makes that pass. Ibaka is just below the free-throw line and to make the pass work, Durant has to feed it to about six feet in front of the rim.
So his decision is to lob a pass about 30 feet in distance without ever considering that Draymond Green has been playing free safety on defense for the entire postseason. How do you not think Green might have a good chance to come over and pick off the pass?
The turnover where Durant gets the switch with Leandro Barbosa defending him and Shaun Livingston gambles in help to try to steal the ball may be the laziest turnovers we've seen from Durant in this sequence. After Livingston gambles and fails, Dion Waiters is wide-open in the corner, and surprise he's calling for the ball. If Durant holds the ball confidently with two hands above his head and turns his body toward the basket, he can pick apart the defense. That's not what happens.
Instead, he's essentially facing the right side of the floor with his shoulders when he wants to pass to the left corner. He keeps the ball below his head and tries a quick pass without much leverage on it. Barbosa easily slaps the ball out of the air. This turnover is so frustrating because it's a basic play Durant will make most of the time. If he beats the gamble by Livingston and delivers the pass to the corner, maybe Waiters cuts the lead to just six in the second quarter. Instead, it's an empty possession with no chance of scoring to show for it.
This last screenshot is similar to the hero lob to Ibaka earlier. The Warriors aren't playing a zone but with Green defending Andre Roberson, they're not concerned with the guard's offensive threat. Green pops to the middle of the floor and leaves Roberson on the baseline. Bogut is in charge of shading both Adams inside and Roberson along the baseline. Once again, Durant tries to make the pass from Curry warmup range, essentially needing to deliver the ball about 35 feet against one of the best defenses in the NBA.
He's trying to lead Roberson away from the basket on the pass so that Bogut has to make a decision in his help. It's a good intention but horrible execution. That lead pass ends up being slapped away by Curry, and a chance to cut the lead to single digits in the third quarter when Curry would end up exploding for a lot of points in just a couple minutes is dead on arrival.
"Yeah, it's me just finding out when the double team's coming," Durant admitted on his issue with taking care of the ball. "Once I get it, I feel like I'm playing one-on-one, but it's more so a load, and guys are loading. So I've just got to make a stronger pass and find out where guys are. That's just me facing up and seeing where it's coming from and making the correct play. There's a few they just got their hands on it, but for the most part I know I'm not going to have a lot of space to play, so I've got to be smarter."
Those are the turnovers that seem entirely correctable with Durant just making better decisions. Don't rush through your passing options. Don't throw lazy one-handed passes against a defense that lives off deflections.
He's also struggled a bit with just having the ball swiped away from him as he's driving. Much of this has been due to Iguodala, who is known to essentially eat an opponent's face defensively. He's stronger than Durant, which allows him to funnel Durant to areas of the floor he knows the help defense will be in. The longer you dribble against Iguodala, the higher the likelihood of him making a play is.
The last turnover in there is a result of Durant not being strong with the ball as he catches it, but also a pass essentially into double coverage that left Durant without much time to react. The others were Iguodala's bear trap hands taking the ball out of Durant's grasp.
A lot of this is correctable. When Durant has the space to shoot, he's still shredding the Warriors defense. But that's not always going to be the situation for him. The Warriors will swarm as much as he can and they'll capitalize on most every mistake made against them. There are a lot of teams you can get away with mistakes against, but the Warriors aren't one of them.
