Oklahoma City Thunder: Andre Roberson, Steven Adams Will Be Keys To Team’s Success
By Aaron Mah
With all eyes on Russell Westbrook next season, the success of the Oklahoma City Thunder will be contingent upon the offensive development of Andre Roberson and Steven Adams.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are officially America’s new basketball team.
With Kevin Durant‘s much ballyhooed departure from the Sooner state, the NBA universe effectively found their newest villain — filling the unattended shoes of the King (LeBron James) when he turned from heel back into babyface with his homecoming to “the Land” during the summer of 2014.
With the Golden State Warriors serving as the big bad bullies, the Thunder are poised to overtake the role as the lovable underdogs of the association. Led by perhaps the fiercest and most unrelenting canine the league has to offer, many are penciling OKC as a League Pass favorite.
In fact, if everything breaks right, a determined and motivated Russell Westbrook may just mess around and average a triple double; it’s not like he hasn’t done so for an extended period of time before.
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But, there is also a giant elephant in the room, and it has to do with how the team is constructed.
On paper, the team should be able to really get after it defensively.
While Westbrook had undoubtedly his worse season as a pro defensively last year, driven in large by his incessant gambling, a focused Russ, alongside Victor Oladipo, should form the league’s most athletic and intimidating backcourt.
You add a defensive swiss-army knife like Andre Roberson on the wings, with “Stone Cold” Steven Adams anchoring the paint and you’ve got the foundation of a top-five defensive unit.
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Such a lineup, however, will be a contemporary spacing nightmare. Both Westbrook and Oladipo are ball-dominant slashers by trade, while Adams takes approximately 72.1 percent of his shot attempts from two feet and in, per Basketball-Reference.
Roberson, on the other hand, would make one hell of a three-and-D player; except he is a career 27.4 percent 3-point shooter.
As such, the Thunder are most likely going to have to play stretch 4s like Ersan Ilyasova and Kyle Singler extended minutes in hopes of creating some modicum of free driving lanes for Russ to exploit.
That would leave Enes Kanter — perhaps the team’s second most proficient offensive weapon — on the bench, when the defensive prowess of Oladipo, Roberson, and most importantly, Adams, would mask much of the UnderKanter’s deficiencies in defending the pick-and-roll.
During the Thunder’s impressive playoff run just some four months ago, however, Roberson and Adams really broke out and served as the wild card catalysts to OKC’s success — especially in the Golden State series.
More specifically, Adams suddenly morphed into a top-10 center, not only anchoring the D with his usual unassuming fervor, but catching and finishing everything in sight.
Likewise, Roberson was all over the court, defending one-through-four with great intensity while nailing catch-and-shoot 3s at a 44.4 percent clip, per NBA.com.
Although such production is most likely unsustainable given what they have shown throughout their entire careers prior to the 2016 postseason, if Adams can maintain 80 percent of he showed offensively next season, the Thunder may not need to turn to Kanter for an interior scoring presence.
Further, if Roberson can hit his open looks from beyond the arc at just a 37-percent rate, the Thunder may just muster enough spacing with him and one of Singler, Ilyasova, or even Anthony Morrow on the floor.
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What the duo of Adams and Roberson brings as defensive aces will be invaluable as Oklahoma City Thunder establishes their identity as a ground and pound team next season (they are also pretty nice on the vocal chords when dueting Backstreet Boys songs).
But, for the team to truly optimize their lineups this upcoming year, they will need to approach their playoff production throughout the entirety of an 82-game campaign.