Oklahoma City Thunder: Giving Billy Donovan His Due

After years of having questionable coaching decisions, the Oklahoma City Thunder appear to have found their solution in Billy Donovan.

Throughout the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook era, the Oklahoma City Thunder have had some fatal flaws that have stopped them from winning it all.

One of the main flaws has been coaching. Thus far in the 2016 NBA Playoffs, Billy Donovan has vanquished the issue of coaching holding them back.

The rookie head coach’s improvement with his rotations and coaching decisions in the playoffs has been a revelation compared to his moves in the regular season.

Billy Donovan is really finding a groove. He's reacting quickly in games, and making smart choices. Improved greatly throughout the season.
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) May 17, 2016

The biggest criticism that Donovan faced in the regular season was that he refused to stagger the minutes of his two superstars, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, so that the Thunder would play an entire game with at least one of the league’s best five to seven players on the floor.

The criticism was valid.

In the 727 minutes that the Thunder played with Westbrook on the floor while Durant rests, the Thunder still managed to score 112.8 points per 100 possessions, according to stats from NBAwowy.com.

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Similar numbers come up when calculating how the Thunder fared with Durant playing with Westbrook on the bench.

With Durant but no Westbrook, the Thunder put up 113.5 points per 100 possessions over 596 minutes.

The 112.8 points per 100 possessions (with Westbrook, no Durant) and 113.5 points per 100 possessions (Durant, no Westbrook) are both just a hair underneath the team’s total points per 100 possessions of 113.6.

To the surprise of no one, that number falls off a cliff when both aren’t on the floor.

Over 769 minutes since the start of the season, the Thunder have mustered only 101.1 points per 100 possessions without at least one of their two superstars on the floor.

In the postseason, Donovan has taken the necessary changes to correct this problem.

In 13 postseason games, Donovan has played a Thunder lineup without Durant or Westbrook for only 42 minutes, most of which have been played in garbage time.

It’s been easier to do in the playoffs, when superstars are expected to play more minutes. Durant is up to 39.8 minutes per game in the postseason (35.8 minutes in the regular season). Westbrook is up to 36.3 minutes per game (34.4 minutes per game in the regular season).

Both of their minutes per game numbers have been skewed a bit with relatively low minute outputs in their Game 1 blowout loss to the Spurs and Game 2 blowout loss to the Warriors.

The rotation fix is one of the primary reasons why the Thunder were able to shock the Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals in six games.

May 2, 2016; San Antonio, TX, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan gives direction to his team against the San Antonio Spurs in game two of the second round of the NBA Playoffs at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports /

In addition to the staggering of the minutes of Durant and Westbrook, Donovan deserves credit for unleashing the unlikely twin towers of Steven Adams and Enes Kanter in the playoffs.

Whether it was dumb luck or a long-con strategy, it’s been extremely effective in the postseason.

The pairing of Adams and Kanter played only 127 minutes together in the regular season.

Those two have played 99 minutes together in the playoffs, and it’s been a monkey wrench that Donovan has successfully thrown at opponents.

The Adams-Kanter duo have outscored opponents by 18.6 points per 100 possessions in the postseason. Even the Spurs, a team loaded with frontcourt depth, had no answer for the paint domination that Adams and Kanter displayed.

While it’s been a pretty small sample size, the playoffs in itself is a small sample size compared to the NBA season.

With these two major moves, Donovan has taken the Thunder to the Western Conference Finals and knotted the series after two games against the record-setting Warriors.

In Oklahoma City, Donovan entered a tricky situation. With two superstars, it’s easy to win a lot of games. However when a team led by Durant and Westbrook isn’t winning titles, the blame will go on the coach, as Scott Brooks found out.

Donovan has navigated coaching rotations like a veteran, not an NBA rookie head coach. The Thunder played a ton of questionable lineups throughout the regular season, making many think he was no different than Brooks.

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Unlike Brooks, Donovan has shown that his inconsistent playing rotations were a result of trial-and-error coaching that should be explored throughout the regular season by a team that was never in doubt of missing the playoffs.

The trial-and-error rotations allowed Donovan to explore all lineup combinations and break them out in the regular season. This style of coaching gives more players on the roster minutes, keeping them engaged throughout the long regular season while resting your starters a bit more.

With no previous NBA head coaching track record, many people (myself included) doubted that Donovan would be the coach to make the best use of the Thunder’s talent.

In the postseason, Donovan has demonstrated that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Will it be enough to knock off the Warriors? Only time will tell.

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What’s important is that he’s been the solution to the issue of coaching that the Thunder have had since the Durant and Westbrook era began competing for titles. Donovan is maxing out the team potential for the Thunder and in the end, that’s all a coach can do.

(All per 100 possessions stats via NBAwowy.com)

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