Oklahoma City Needs to be 'Stubborn' on Offense Down the Stretch

The Thunder's game plan was thrown off on Sunday night, and the team couldn't put pressure on the rim.

In a hyped-up out-of-conference matchup, two of the best teams in the NBA squared off in Milwaukee. The Thunder and Bucks are both in the top two in their respective conferences, and it seemed like a good chance for Oklahoma City to make a statement and measure itself with the playoffs on deck. The exact opposite happened, though.

The Thunder fell flat, and the starters sat the entire fourth quarter for all the wrong reasons. Oklahoma City got blown out of the water and Milwaukee coasted to a 118-93 victory. There were hardly any positives to take away from the loss, and the Thunder have little time to sulk in defeat with an impossible stretch of games coming up. They need to figure out what went wrong in a hurry.

Stating the obvious, missing 33 3-pointers is the first piece of evidence to point to. Oklahoma City has been the most efficient outside shooting team in the NBA this season, so to go ice cold like that in a big game was not normal whatsoever.

But at some point during the game, the Thunder got away from its bread and butter. It didn’t look like a normal outing for the team’s ever-efficient offense. Oklahoma City stopped driving the basketball and couldn’t get to the free throw line, so it’s no surprise everything went stale when the jump shots weren’t falling.

“I'll be interested to see how that grades out,” Mark Daigneault said of the team’s open shots that didn’t fall. “But obviously we'd like to get to the paint, the line more than we did tonight. But we weren't quite stubborn enough in terms of the force we played with, the pace we played with.”

Being stubborn with the offensive system is exactly what Oklahoma City needs, Daigneault is right. When the Thunder imposes its philosophies and pace on the game, the team is hard to beat. The slashing, driving, and putting pressure on the rim is what makes this team so special. On Sunday night, they lost sight of that and tried to shoot their way out of it.

Especially when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander can’t get it going, the Thunder need to place even more of an emphasis on driving and kicking. On Sunday night, the team had just 20 assists compared to Milwaukee’s 33. The Bucks also outrebounded the Thunder 57 to 37. Oklahoma City has proven it can win even in games that they get out-rebounded, but everything is magnified when the offense goes stale.

Down the stretch, and in the playoffs, Oklahoma City will have to be stubborn with its offense. Getting pushed around and thrown off track from the game plan is the worst thing that could happen for this young team.

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