Kobe Bryant's Worst Nightmare

I caught the April 5 game in Denver where the Oklahoma Thunder won 101-94. I’ll tell you honestly I really, really like the Thunder and I guess I am a little biased in their favor.

Quest for the Ring (QFTR) is supposed to be biased in favor of teams doing more right than wrong and biased against teams doing more wrong than right in the Quest. I openly admit I’m biased against the Nuggets because they do a lot more wrong than right in the Quest.

Sometimes though on top of the right or wrong bias there might be an additional bias. One such case is that as I say I really like the Thunder players who I perceive as having more characteristics for winning the Quest than you would expect just by chance alone. In other words, if the coaching was right and the Thunder made one or two or three more right moves in a few more off seasons, the Thunder could indeed win The Quest for the Ring sometime within the next half dozen years.

As you might suspect, I wanted Oklahoma to win the April 5 game in Denver against the Nuggets. I wanted them to win huge. I wanted them to win by at least 20 and preferably by about 35! I wanted them to run the Nuggets out of their own building. I wanted to see George Karl in tears. I wanted to see Kenyon Martin crying at how Serge Ibaka stopped him on every single play and at how at the other end of the court Ibaka scored almost at will against the much older Martin. I wanted to see Nuggets fans throwing their rose colored glasses out onto the court in disgust. I wanted to see League officials after the game discussing the possibility of throwing Denver out of the League.

Well unfortunately none of the dramatics I wanted came to pass. They seldom do for obvious reasons; I hope for too much, laugh out loud. But nevertheless, Oklahoma did get the win despite playing unwisely and so at least my basic knowledge that Oklahoma is a substantially better team than Denver post Carmelo was confirmed. So it was not quite the game I wanted to see but Oklahoma won fairly easily regardless.

Oklahoma is actually a far better pro basketball team than are the way overrated Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets were overrated BEFORE Carmelo left and now they are even more overrated. On the other hand, Kobe Bryant thinks of the Thunder as the most underrated team in basketball and I fully agree with him.

VERY RECENT HUGE IMPROVEMENTS FOR OKLAHOMA DEFENSIVELY
This year Oklahoma was soft on paint defense and was poor on defense outside the paint until two extremely important things happened:

--The Thunder acquired Center Kendrick Perkins from the Boston Celtics in a February 2011 trade that may very well have cost the Celtics the 2011 Championship and that may have possibly (a boy can dream) set the stage for the Thunder to be in the 2011 West Final. Kendrick Perkins is one of the best paint defenders in the NBA. Paint defense is crucial in playoff games. Oklahoma instantly went from soft in the paint to respectable in the paint.

--Serge Ibaka was made the starting power forward of the Thunder. Ibaka is probably the very best young paint defender in the NBA so when you add him to Perkins now Oklahoma goes from respectable in the paint to very possibly within range of the top paint defending teams in the NBA: the Orlando Magic, the Boston Celtics (although they won’t be as good with no Perkins) and the Chicago Bulls. Chicago Coach Tom Thibodeau knows all about how paint defense wins you playoff games and he has the Bulls playing monstrously well defensively down low.

Quest for the Ring back in January said it was already overdue that Ibaka start. But Jeff Green was starting at PF while Nenad Kristic was starting Center. Kristic is one of the very worst centers in the League defensively and Green is well below average defensively at PF. So that starting lineup was a paint defending nightmare and sure enough Oklahoma was very bad at defending the paint until those two were shipped to Boston of all places and Perkins and Ibaka were shuffled in to the now much better starting line-up. For Oklahoma it was out with the really really bad paint defense and in with the respectable at a minimum and possibly very good paint defense. Now the Thunder potentially have a good enough paint defense to win a few playoff games they would have lost otherwise.

THE CELTICS TAKE THE HIT FROM ONE OF THE WORST TRADES IN YEARS
Why the Celtics who won the 2008 Quest traded one of the very best defensive centers (Kendrick Perkins) for one of the worst (Nenad Kristic) is one of the biggest puzzlements in many, many years. And then the Celtics got PF Jeff Green, who at best is an average PF and is most likely below average. This was simply one of the worst trades in years (for Boston and one of the best for Oklahoma) and was even more unbalanced than the Orlando-Phoenix trade that was made shortly before, the one that made Orlando worse rather than better.

Of course, QFTR expects to have time to more extensively discuss the details of the Boston-Oklahoma trade in future Reports.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE COLORADO RANCH
Meanwhile, the Nuggets have been mostly winning since the Carmelo Anthony trade so all the rose colored glasses types have been worshipping George Karl even more than usual and have been even more delusional than usual about the Nuggets, who in recent years have practically become the Dallas Cowboys of basketball: “America’s Team”.

America’s Team is always good even when it is not. When America’s Team is not really that good, they are hyped up so that the general public overrates them enough to make them playoff competitors (even when they’re not). All the naïve types have to all the time be discussing how America’s team will be doing in the playoffs even if in reality it will be lucky if America’s team even makes the playoffs. Just like the Cowboys recently, the Nuggets definitely do not have either the personnel or the playing system to be anything close to a real contender in the playoffs.

All these Nuggets wins since the Carmelo trade are regular season wins, remember? George Karl always wins extra games in the regular season but then always loses games he should have won in the playoffs, remember? This has been proven here at Quest for the Ring beyond any shadow of a doubt.

THE KNICKS ON DEFENSE ARE LIKE CHICKENS WITH THE HEADS CUT OFF
As for Carmelo and New York, as already Reported in the “Aftermath…” series a few weeks ago, the Knicks are defensively little more than chickens running around with their heads cut off until and unless they make sure that Carmelo and Amare Stoudemire are playing as well defensively as they possibly can, until the rest of the Knicks are rewarded for their defense as much as they are for their offense, until defensive specialists like Ronny Turiaf and Renaldo Balkman are not cheated out of playing time, and until the Knicks acquire at least one superstar who is outstanding defensively or else they acquire two or even three defensive specialists down roster.

Perhaps in order to meet these objectives Mike D’Antoni has to go. But he could stay as long as he didn’t stand in the way of changes the Knicks need to move away from being defensively pathetic. Perhaps the Knicks could get a coach who would be “the defensive coach” who Mike D’Antoni would not be able to automatically overrule. In other words D’Antoni and the Defensive Coach could co-coach the team. In football there is the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator and this type of coaching structure could work out extremely well for NBA teams in situations where the one existing head coach is heavily biased in favor of one or the other and the assistants to that head coach have little or no real power.

If D’Antoni ever claims he is not biased heavily in favor of offense, try not to laugh in his face (because he is a great offensive coach) but make a mental note that he is delusional or that he is trying to fool you.

RUSSELL WESTBROOK AND SCOTT BROOKS: STOP THE MADNESS PLEASE
In the first quarter on April 5 in Denver Oklahoma started to run away with the game and I honestly thought it was going to end up being a rout. But Russell Westbrook spoiled that.

Russell Westbrook can make plays if he wanna but sometimes he doesn’t wanna. I’ve tuned into an Oklahoma game twice this season hoping to see Oklahoma play both smart and well and each time Oklahoma won the game but played foolishly. More specifically, I’ve personally out of three or four Thunder games watched seen two games this year where Point Guard Westbrook decided he wasn’t going to run point and wasn’t going to make plays.

Problem is, like it or not he’s the point guard and when your point guard goes on strike you either lose or maybe you win despite not scoring as many points as you should simply because you are a much better team than the opponent. As just explained, Oklahoma is a much better team than Denver so Oklahoma relied mostly on that basic fact for the win.

But obviously that strategy won’t work in the playoffs when the opponent is just as good a team or a better one. To win against teams that are just as good or better than you are in the playoffs you have no choice but to respect the point guard position and role.

Oklahoma Coach Scott “I finally took QFTR's advice and started Serge Ibaka when a manager threatened to fire me if I didn’t” Brooks should worry about being fired for not coaching Westbrook correctly. Westbrook was a 2-guard in College but he can play the point better than most of the actual NBA point guards when he wants to. When motivated Westbrook can make more than enough plays for the Thunder to have a very difficult to defend offense. The offense I saw in this April 5 game in Denver was very easy to defend and, sure enough, the Nuggets did pretty well at defending in the game.

It would be bad enough if while on point guard strike Westbrook was making his jumpers and finishing his drives. But in both this game and in the previous one I saw where Westbrook was on strike, he was missing way too many of his shots and not finishing nearly enough of his drives. Westbrook is extremely athletic and he has great moves which allow him to get past paint defenders. But in games where he is not finishing well yet he is trying to score over and over and over while he is ignoring his point guard responsibility it is a sad thing to see.

There is little in basketball more pathetic than a point guard not making many plays because he is attempting too many isolation shots himself and then to add insult to injury not making very many of those shots. It was pure misery watching Russell play like a fool which kept the inferior Nuggets team in the game. But fortunately the Thunder did pull the win out.

No one is saying that Russell Westbrook can not play both guard positions at once; he’s definitely qualified to do that in theory. But he has to go about it in the right way. He can’t while designated as PG play ONLY shooting guard and expect to win playoff games that way. Westbrook has to balance the positions so in other words he has to balance or mix up playmaking with attempting to score himself. He needs to leave his defender guessing.

There is no excuse for Oklahoma Coach Brooks not being all over Westbrook when he goes on point guard strike and starts trying to score in isolation over and over and over again. This is the risk you have when you take a combo guard and designate him point, that your point guard will be absent without leave. The solution is obvious: the coach needs to read the striker the riot act.

Beating the Nuggets in Denver is much less impressive than it may seem to be. The Thunder will be hammered by teams such as the Lakers, Spurs, and very possibly even the Mavericks if Russell Westbrook refuses to make playmaking a top priority, especially since most if not all of the other Thunder don’t seem to be that interested in making plays either. Oklahoma’s assists per game and its assists per field goal made are both ridiculously low. Oklahoma can obviously still beat Denver in the playoffs even if Westbrook and Brooks foul things up (in more games than it should take) but I can't see how the Thunder can possibly beat the Spurs or the Lakers while Brooks and Westbrook are not respecting the point.

DEFENDING THE NUGGETS IS LIKE TAKING CANDY FROM A BABY
As for defending the Nuggets: this is like taking candy from a baby regardless of whether Raymond Felton or Ty Lawson is running point (or even if both of them are playing at the same time; yes it’s true; George Karl is often playing two point guards at the same time, laugh out loud.)

Roughly three years ago the Nuggets came up with this half baked theory that you could win a lot of games (presumably including playoff games) by coaching your team to pass up the vast majority of open jumpers in favor of driving into paint for layups and hopefully some three-point plays if the defender fouls. George Karl has told his players that the Nuggets’ (America’s Team, remember) offense shall begin and end with drives to the rack, getting fouled, and making free throws.

QFTR did a Report roughly two years ago which closely looked at this strategy and concluded that like so many of George Karl’s theories, this one produces a few extra regular season wins but then backfires in the playoffs. In the playoffs the best paint defending teams step on to the hardwood which puts Karl and the Nuggets’ strategy on the ropes from the get go. The knockout blow is when the other team early in a seven game series realizes that the Nuggets sacrifice the elements of surprise and of flexibility with their driving into the paint obsession. That is, teams which don’t use the whole floor for their offense give up a lot of the advantage of surprise and flexibility which are required for quality playoff offenses.

So when all is said and done, all the coach of the Nuggets’ opponent needs to do is remind his players over and over to be ready at all times to defend the Nuggets’ endless drives into the paint. When you play the Nuggets you can practically take the night off as far as perimeter defending is concerned. You overweight paint defense as much as you can until and unless the Nuggets give up their obsession and start shooting from outside the paint.

There was a funny moment late in the April 5 Thunder-Nuggets game in Denver when the Thunders’ lead was down to about 5 points and Scott Brooks ordered the Thunder to double team Ty Lawson. Laugh out loud. Rarely do you see point guards doubled. And although Ty Lawson is a fine young point guard but he’s not at the moment a superstar who you would normally think should be doubled. But see, Lawson had been burning the Thunder with his endless lightning fast drives into the paint all night, and by late in the game it was obvious that the Nuggets in general and especially Lawson in particular had a one dimensional offense where they and he were going to drive into the paint over and over again regardless of how many sacrificed assists off great passes into the paint and regardless of how many uncontested mid-range jumpers and threes they sacrifice in the process.

So during the course of one single game Oklahoma Coach Scott Brooks had learned how obsessed the Nuggets are with taking the ball to the rack and looking for layups and fouls. In a seven game playoff series, the Nuggets’ offense would be toast versus the Thunder because Brooks will double Ty Lawson over and over and over as Lawson drives into the paint over and over and over. Lawson may be lightning quick and he is fairly elusive but he’s no magician; he’ll be shut down if the Thunder (or anyone else) learn how to collapse two guys on him in the paint without any dumb fouls so as to physically block his path to the hoop.

Once the opponent adjusts to the Nuggets’ obsession the Nuggets’ offense becomes like cold half eaten toast.

RAYMOND FELTON SHOULD IN FACT QUIT THE NUGGETS
And did I mention that Raymond Felton, who in all fairness is a better point guard right now than is Ty Lawson, has already stated that he will probably demand to be traded if Lawson remains the starting Nuggets PG? I think Lawson is outstanding himself and I've said so in more than one previous Report but whoever is better at making plays is who you need in the playoffs and right now Felton is better at making plays than is Lawson, period. Lawson would be a quality back up point guard in the playoffs but would not be a smart choice over Felton right now for starting in the playoffs.

So therefore you can just about bet the ranch that Karl will blunder and that Lawson will start in the playoffs instead of Felton. Karl has become very fond of Lawson’s personality while Felton's personality is still under review, laugh out loud.

So in the near future, oh here we go again, yet another quality player (Raymond Felton) will probably be demanding to be traded from Colorado’s professional basketball team.

You know the one, the team that wins a bunch of extra home games just because they are used to the thin oxygen in Denver whereas the opponents are not. But then during a playoff series the Nuggets’ opponent not only figures out the way to defeat whatever cheap scheme George Karl is currently running but also adjusts to the thin air to some extent. Have you ever wondered why the Nuggets run a fast pace year after year and decade after decade? This maximizes the advantage they get from the thin air because Nuggets’ players are used to running a lot in the thin air whereas their opponents are not. So if they run a fast pace they maximize their home advantage and they have more of a home court advantage than most teams do.

But getting back to PG Raymond Felton, if he is really, really serious about his point guard career, he will in fact insist on a relocation. When Mike D’Antoni was his coach he had one of the best point guard coaches, and now that George Karl is his coach Felton has one of the worst point guard coaches. I mean, can a man who sometimes has two point guards playing at the same time with neither of them making any plays to speak of possibly be a good point guard coach, laugh out loud?

KOBE BRYANT'S WORST NIGHTMARE
Whether Kobe Bryant’s worst fears come true are up to the Thunder. If the Thunder play smart and in accordance with what is taught at QFTR then they can very possibly make Kobe live his worst nightmare in real life.

In Kobe Bryant’s worst nightmare the Lakers are playing the Thunder in the West Final. Russell Westbrook respects the point guard position and role and thus gets the combo guard thing right.

In Kobe Bryant’s nightmare Kendrick Perkins and Serge Ibaka team up to make a fairly good paint defense.

In Kobe Bryant’s worst nightmare the Thunder stop sleeping so much on perimeter and jump shot defending. They switch off the picks IF they have to and in general they hustle and play smart and hard defensively.

In Kobe Bryant’s worst nightmare, Westbrook, over and over again, instead of fumbling finishes and missing short jumpers all the time, often kicks it out to a three point shooter such as Kevin Durant, James Harden or Daequan Cook who sinks the three. And the Thunder three-point shooters are not so timid in attempting threes that they can make at a 35% or more rate.

In Kobe Bryant’s worst nightmare the Thunder take the Lakers to seven games and the Lakers are in real trouble in game seven.

Kobe Bryant’s worst nightmare is one of my dreams and I of course don’t classify it as a nightmare. If a team plays really really smart and wins games in the playoffs they were “supposed to lose” that is a good dream to me, not a nightmare.

So Russell Westbrook and Scott Brooks, do you want to make Kobe’s nightmare come true or do you want to play like fools?