AJ Hammons

AJ Hammons has always been one of the most talented C's in the country and he's finally coming into his own as a senior at Purdue. His per-game numbers have jumped significantly:

Junior: 11.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.8 blocks on 54% shooting

Senior: 14.7 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.7 blocks on 59.2% shooting

It's a little misleading to look at his per-minute statistics because part of the reason why he plays only 24 minutes a game is that he's such an enormous human being and he's not in great shape so he can't play all that much more. At the same time, part of the reason that he's a part-time player is that he's being backed up by another NBA prospect at C in Isaac Haas. What these per-40 minute numbers do show you is just how dominant he has been when he is on the floor:

Hammons per-40 minutes: 24.4 points, 13.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists (on 3.4 turnovers), 0.5 steals and 4.4 blocks a game 

This is a guy who has a PER of 31.2. He's a major problem for any team that faces Purdue and there isn't a C in the country who can match up with him 1-on-1. At 7'0 260 with a 7'3 wingspan, Hammons is a Leviathan sized human being who towers over the vast majority of NCAA C's and would be one of the biggest players at his position as soon as he gets into the NBA. What makes him such an interesting prospect, though, is how skilled and mobile he is for a guy with his size.

Hammons is a dominant post scorer

He can score over either shoulder and he has phenomenal touch around the rim. You can see that in the fact that he shoots 73.4% from the free-throw line - he's the farthest thing from an unskilled brute and he's going to be a problem in the post at any level. He knows how to use his size to create position in the post and he knows what to do with the ball when he gets it down low. Watch how calmly he deals with the dig down and how he kicks the ball out and scores on the repost:

His size, length and touch means that he's capable of disregarding help  and scoring in traffic:

What's nice about Hammons is that he's a big guy whose not afraid to use his size. With more and more teams playing smaller players at the C position, a super-sized C like Hammons is the perfect counter. I don't care how good a post defender Draymond Green is - he's going to have difficulty keeping Hammons off the block and he's going to get worn out getting into wrestling matches with such a mammoth human being. Hammons is a big who knows how to play big.

Hammons is a shot-blocking machine

Hammons is as gifted a shot-blocker as has come out of the NCAA game in recent memory. He can routinely block shots with either hand and he turns the paint into a no-fly zone. He can do all your basic rim protection blocks:

He just envelops smaller guys in the post. It's basically impossible for smaller guys to power through him and there aren't going to be many guys even at the next level who can score over the top of him.

He's fast and agile enough to chase down blocks from behind and pin them on the backboard. It takes a lot of athleticism to make a play like this and not may 7'0 260+ pound guys can do it.

Watch how violently he blocks the shot. The real impressive part is the timing it requires to make such an emphatic rejection with fouling the offensive player:

You can forget about challenging him at the rim. Deyonta Davis is a 6'9+ jumping jack who could end up going in the lottery at some point. Hammons rotated over and told him no way is he going to dunk on him:

Hammons still has a lot of room for growth in his game

Purdue runs a very traditional offense based around entering the ball into the post to Hammons, Haas and Caleb Swanigan (a very talented 6'9 260 freshman 4/5 who has a chance to play in the NBA as well). They almost always play two post men at the same time and there's very little room for any of their big men to roll to the rim. Despite his immense size, Hammons is agile enough to catch and finish on the move and he could be a real roll threat when playing in space next to a high-level playmaking guard, which Purdue does not have.

He's a really good athlete for a man of his size. He doesn't finish this lob but the way he runs the floor and plays above the rim is really impressive. While he definitely needs to lose a little weight and become more sculpted, it's easy to dream on him if he can become a little more streamlined.

He's not a great passer by any means, but he has gotten more used to reading the defense and finding the open man, if for no other reason than the amount of double teams he has received in his four seasons at Purdue. He's so tall that it's really easy for him to see over the defense:

In this sequence, he finds Swanigan when he cuts to the rim off the double team. This is some good big-to-big passing and it's encouraging that Hammons can A) read the play and B) make the pass even if Swanigan doesn't end up catching the ball.

While Purdue mostly has their big men playing back in the pick-and-roll and protecting the rim, Hammons is agile enough to at least slide his feet on the perimeter when asked to do so. Here he is staying in front of Denzel Valentine:

He didn't showcase this part of his game against Michigan State, but Hammons has shown the ability to step out and knock down perimeter jumpers as well this season. He's 4-8 from 3 and he's a pretty consistent shooter from 20+ feet. There aren't any real holes in his game and he can do just about everything that a C needs to do pretty well.

Hammons age isn't as big a concern as it would be for a smaller player

The biggest knock on Hammons is his age. He's a fourth-year senior whose already 23 and he will turn 24 before he enters the NBA. To put that in perspective, he's a few months older than four-year NBA veteran Jonas Valanciunas, which is pretty mind-boggling. So while Hammons has been spending the last 4 years playing against smaller players, Valanciunas has been testing himself and growing against the biggest and most talented C's in the world. 

That's a concern but it's not that big a concern. Here's why. The issue with most older players at the NCAA level is that they are dominating smaller and less physically developed players, an advantage that will go away once they get to the next level. The difference with Hammons is that he's going to be one of the biggest players at the next level too. He's not going to walk into the NBA and be physically intimidated. He can go toe-to-toe even with guys as big as Andre Drummond and Brook Lopez. He's just about as big as those guys are so it's not a huge deal.

It's the same reason why Gorgui Dieng and Mason Plumlee (both of whom were 24-year old rookies) have been able to outperform their draft position. When you are super big and super skilled, it doesn't really matter how old you are because there are so few guys with your physical abilities at any level of the game. I don't think Hammons is going to be a star but I think he can be like Dieng and Plumlee and be a 10+ year NBA veteran who can start on a good team in the right situation, which would represent a huge value where he's currently projected (No. 36 in the most recent DraftExpress mock).

Hammons is the best traditional C in this year's draft. My only real question is how much value a traditional 5 whose most effective around the rim really has in the modern NBA. Will Hammons be able to survive on the perimeter in the pace-and-space NBA or will teams be better off playing smaller and more agile C's like Damian Jones and Stephen Zimmerman? Either way, I think he would represent a great part of a C platoon with a smaller and more skilled small-ball 5 and he will have a long and productive career at the next level. This guy can really play and it would be pretty outrageous if some team can pick him up for a 2nd round pick. The fans of the team that drafts him aren't going to be able to believe how big, how skilled and how agile he is. 

The 2015 Draft

At RealGM, a look at why the back half of the 2015 lottery could be stronger than the top half of 2016.

Jazz

1) Utah has a spacing problem upfront

The Jazz hadn't won a game in Dallas for five seasons and the story of the last few times they came into the AAC was always the same. The Mavs would hide Dirk Nowitzki on Rudy Gobert and pack the paint to a ridiculous extreme while Gobert and Derrick Favors would struggle to chase Dirk around the perimeter. Utah's defense is built around locking down the paint but that's only so valuable against a Dallas team that likes to bomb jumpers off the dribble while the Mavs are a smart veteran team that does a good job of letting guys who can't shoot shoot. It looked like the same thing would happen on Tuesday, as the Mavs were comfortably ahead for most of the night. The difference was that Quin Snyder went to Trey Lyles at the 4 and opened up the floor. The plus/minus numbers say it all.

Gobert; -16 in 37 minutes
Lyles: +14 in 14 minutes

All of a sudden, with Lyles dragging his man out on the perimeter, there was room for Favors to roll to the rim on the pick-and-roll. The name of the game in the modern NBA is spacing and playing a stretch 4 next to a rim-runner at the 5 rather than pairing two C's without much range on the perimeter made all the difference in the world. A lot has to go right to run a 2-post offense in the modern NBA:

1) Two big men who can punish smaller defenders with their back to the basket
2) Both big men have to be able to step out to at least 15-20+ feet in order to create room for the other.
3) Three shooters on the perimeter
4) A point guard who can control tempo and enter the ball into the post

How many of those checkmarks can Utah actually hit? The Mavs were hiding Dirk and Chandler Parsons with relative impunity on Gobert. Neither Gobert nor Favors can shoot 3's and neither is much of a threat to put the ball on the floor. For as great as they are on defense, they are so easy to game-plan against on offense that it puts a ceiling on what the Jazz can do. It works reasonably well in the regular season, but when they get to the post-season and every coach starts to game-plan like Rick Carlisle does, the basic spacing problem is going to rear its head time and time again.

2) Trey Lyles is the answer at the 4

Lyles was incredible in this game. Not only was his skill-set huge in opening up the floor for everyone else, he dominated his individual match-up on Dirk, at least on offense. Dirk is obviously not very good at defense anymore but you rarely see an opposing big man turn him into a traffic cone so completely. Dirk does a decent job of using his size to stay in front of guys who can't shoot and crowding guys who can't dribble - he's absolutely helpless when he's going up against a guy who can do both. At 6'10 235 with a 7'2 wingspan, Lyles is a big man who can dribble, shoot and pass and he has an incredible feel for the game. What stands out about watching him in person is just how fluid he is with the ball. He has a high basketball IQ and the game comes really easy for him.

He's a great match with either one of the Utah C's. He's not a great athlete by any stretch of the imagination and he will definitely need to play with a rim protector behind him. Gobert and Favors are both more than capable of anchoring their defense and they both need to be complemented by an offensive-minded 4 who can thrive at 20+ feet, whether it's shooting the ball or making plays off the dribble. Lyles ceiling will be determined by his 3-point shot and he's posting really solid numbers in his rookie season (20-46). If he can consistently make 2-3 a game at a 35% clip, he's going to be a very special player.

It's hard to come up with a good comparison for Lyles because he's such a unique player. I remember at the 2014 McDonald's All-American Game they asked all their players to list an NBA player whom their game resembled and Lyles said he was Carmelo Anthony mixed with Tim Duncan. At the very least, you have to appreciate his confidence. He's a super-sized 4 with the game and feel of a 3 and the speed of a 5. The closest guy to compare him too is probably Boris Diaw, though he's not as athletic as Boris was in his prime and he's not as slow as Boris is now. There's definitely some Paul Millsapp in his game, although he's bigger and some Markieff Morris, although he's much smoother and more fluid.

The thing to remember about Lyles was that he was an elite recruit. He would have come into college behind an avalanche of hype were it not for the fact that he was in a perfect position to be hidden in college. He was forced to play out of position as a 3 next to two lottery picks at the 4 and 5 (Karl Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein) and two guards who loved to hold the ball and couldn't space the floor (The Harrison) on a team that had so many NBA prospects that they were using platoons for most of the season. There was just no opportunity for him whatsoever to put up statistics so you can pretty much throw away anything he did at the NCAA level in terms of his numbers, which is a huge problem for modern front offices who are almost blind without them. He ended up falling to a team that didn't depend on stats for illumination and could use their eyes to evaluate players. If you were scouting the box score, there was nothing too special about Lyles. The only way to properly value him was to know how to look beyond the stats and to evaluate his skill-set and his physical tools.



3. Rodney Hood looks like a star

Lyles isn't the only guy whose outperforming his draft slot in Utah. The Jazz managed to draft Rodney Hood with the No. 22 pick in the 2014 draft, which looks absolutely ridiculous now. He was the best player on the floor on Tuesday and he was the difference in the game, with 29 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists on 26 shots. At 6'8 205, Hood is a do it all wing player who can guard all 3 perimeter positions, stroke 3's, shoot off the dribble and set up his teammates. The Mavs love to play small-ball line-ups on the perimeter with multiple PG's and Hood absolutely devastated them. There's just nothing smaller guards can do to stop him. Check the impossible shot he hit to send the game into OT:

Rodney Hood hit this huge three to send Jazz-Mavericks to overtime. He's up to 28 points (via @utahjazz) https://t.co/UQj4s8EtMH

— SI NBA (@si_nba) February 10, 2016

"Because of his size and because of the way he shoots and elevates, those are tough shots to contest and tough to block. When he's in his range in that 12-15 foot pocket, he's just hard to guard." - Quin Snyder

Hood is a better shooter than Hayward and he might actually be a better scorer too, at least down the road. It just seems like he's a little smoother with the ball in his hands. Hayward has to expend a lot of energy to get shots off sometimes - Hood just flows into open shots like it's the most natural thing in the world. There are two keys to guarding guys on the perimeter - 1) throw longer and more athletic defenders on them and 2) force them into doing something they aren't comfortable doing, whether it's shoot, pass or dribble. The problem with Hood is that there aren't many guys in the world who are longer and more athletic than him and he has a pretty complete game.

When you have a guy who hits both of those checkmarks, you have a guy who could be the primary option on a good team, which means you are looking at an All-Star caliber player. The combination of Hood and Hayward is going to make the Jazz a special team and that's before you even get into guys like Favors, Gobert, Lyles, Alec Burks and Dante Exum.

I'm not saying he's James Harden (he isn't) but this is an interesting comparison considering they both came into the league as role players asked to play off other guys:

Stats for @JHarden13 & Rodney Hood are eerily similar for the 1st 2 years of their careers #BBVARisingStars pic.twitter.com/kPYwv1F6Wz

— NBA (@NBA) February 8, 2016

4. The Jazz are a young team on the rise

Carlisle on Utah: "That's a team that's on the rise. That's a team that's the future of our league."

— Bobby Karalla (@bobbykaralla) February 10, 2016

Utah has had a really tough season while dealing with a seemingly never-ending string of injuries. The good news is they have managed to stay afloat and they appear poised to make a strong push going into the 2nd half of the season. At 26-25, they are the No. 7 seed out West, one game ahead of Houston at No. 8 and one game behind Dallas at No. 6. They are only 3.5 games behind Memphis at No. 5 and with Marc Gasol out indefinitely with a broken foot the bottom half of the Western Conference playoff race is wide open. The Jazz are the only team in that mix with a positive point differential. I wouldn't be surprised if they move all the way up to No. 5 and it seems unlikely they will fall too far from that spot in the standings anytime in the next few seasons.

Here's the five I would go with:

Exum
Hood
Hayward
Lyles
Gobert

That still leaves Burks and Favors, both of whom could be starters on elite teams. They are basically going to have 7 high-caliber starting players, all of whom can do multiple things on both sides of the ball. They have one of the best front offices in the league and they have found their coach. It's been a long time coming in Utah but when it starts coming it's going to start coming fast.

5. Erick Green and Chris Johnson could be players too

The Jazz have a great eye for talent and it's probably no surprise that, like the Thunder, they are a branch of the Spurs front office tree. While they didn't have the benefit of Kevin Durant falling in their lap, they did have the benefit of learning from some of OKC's mistakes. Just like OKC, they are a small-market franchise that really values the draft and the pipeline of young playes isn't slowing down anytime soon. The difference is that they have a coach who seems to know what he's doing and whose not as tied down to giving minutes to veterans who cannot play.

They signed Erick Green to a 10-day contract and he got his first real playing time on Tuesday when Trey Burke sat out with a flu. I liked him a lot coming out of Virginia Tech and he looked good against Dallas. At 6'4 185 with a 6'6 wingspan, he's super fast and he has great size for a PG. He was the co-ACC Player of the Year as a senior but he didn't get a lot of publicity playing on a Tech team that had just fired their coach and he has spent the last three seasons bouncing around the NBA, the D-League and Europe after being drafted in the 2nd round by the Denver Nuggets (another team that has proven they know what they are doing when it comes to the draft). His D-League numbers paint a pretty picture - he's shooting really well (48.4% from 3 on 6.7 3PA's) and he's posting the best assist-to-turnover ratio of his career (4.3 assists on 1.7 turnovers). Here's a hot take for you - I'm not sure Trey Burke is a better player.



The hits never stop with Utah because Chris Johnson looks like a solid player as well and he actually got a lot of the crunch time minutes on Tuesday. At 6'6 205 with a 6'11 wingspan, he has a great combination of length and athleticism and he definitely moves like a guy who can have a long NBA career as a defensive specialist. It's just going to be a matter of whether he can knock down 3's - he's 16-57 (28.1%) this season.

What I really love about what the Jazz are doing is they are targeting 25-26 year olds who have put in time in the D-League and who are dying for a chance to play in the NBA. There's no Kendrick Perkins or Derek Fisher or Caron Butler in Utah. The Thunder brought in role players from one of two extremes - either they were 10+ years in the league and couldn't play anymore or they were under-23 first-round picks whom their coaching staff couldn't (or wouldn't) trust to play in the playoffs. The Jazz are bringing in guys in that sweet spot where the mental and physical elevators intersect.

Virginia Tech

At Vice Sports, a look at the blueprint Buzz Williams is using to turn around one of the worst Power 5 programs in the country.

OKC and the Modern NBA

At RealGM, a look at how the Thunder got caught in the transition from a big man's league to a small man's league.

Robert Carter III

Purdue vs. Maryland on Saturday was an NBA scout's dream. It featured six different 6'9+ players who are NBA prospects, three on each team. The hardest part about judging big men at the NCAA level is they rarely get the chance to go up against guys who are just as big, just as skilled and just as fast as them. The ability to dominate smaller players who don't have NBA-caliber athleticism doesn't mean all that much - that's why I wasn't too concerned that Diamond Stone racked up 39 points against Penn State earlier this season. Play well against guys your own size and that means something.

Stone is widely pegged as a lottery pick but he wasn't even his team's best big man on Saturday. The win over Purdue was all about Robert Carter III, the Maryland junior who had transferred from Georgia Tech. RC3 hasn't gotten much publicity in NBA draft circles (he's currently No. 71 on the DX Top 100) but he can really play and he showed off every facet of his game in a dominating performance against a Purdue team that featured a guy who should be a first round pick in 2016 (AJ Hammons), another mammoth C with a chance to play in the league (Lucas Haas) and a  talented young PF who should be a first-round pick down the road (Caleb Swanigan).

RC3: 19 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists on 0 turnovers, 2 blocks and 1 steal on 7-10 shooting

Carter can score in a number of ways

The most impressive part of his game was his three-point shooting. There aren't many guys with his size (6'9 235 with a 7'3 wingspan) who can so comfortably run the pick-and-pop:

RC3's 3-point shooting has jumped considerably from his sophomore season at Georgia Tech, going from 26.4% on 2.6 3PA's to 35.1% on 2.4 3PA's. He clearly spent a lot of time in the gym working on his shot during his transfer season, going from 65.3% on 3.3 FTA's to 76.1% on 3.0 FTA's. None of the Purdue big men could stick with Carter on the perimeter and the threat of his shot (4-6 from 3) opened up the rest of his game.

He can play closer to the basket as well. He knows how to leverage his speed to get around bigger defenders and score over the top of them:

Carter is a skilled big man with a great feel for the game

What makes Carter stand out from a lot of big men is his ability to handle the ball. He has the skill-set of a guard in that he can take the ball up the court, start the break himself and find the open shooter:

Someone has to pick up in transition or he's going to end up making plays like this. This is the type of play that the best big men in the modern game can make. It's the kind of thing that Draymond Green does all the time.

He just has a great feel for the game. This is an outlet pass that Kevin Love could be proud of:

Carter plays bigger than his size on defense

Carter is not an elite shot-blocker but he is capable of protecting the rim:

Much more intriguing is his speed and his ability to move his feet on the perimeter and contest shots:

Carter is a prototype small-ball 5

A generation ago, Carter would have been a 4. He was 6'9 and he had prototype size and the ability to play on the perimeter and in the post on both sides of the ball. These days, height isn't as important a consideration at the C position while speed and shooting is more important than ever. The problem with most small ball 5's is they just don't have the size and the strength to wrestle with the bigger C's at the NBA level. They don't need to dominate bigger players - they just need to be able to hold their own against them. That was the most encouraging part of Carter's performance on Saturday to me. Watch how he's able to hold off Haas (7'2 300) in the block. This is a guy whose not afraid of getting physical and guarding bigger players:

What makes that skill so valuable is what it allows you to do on the other end of the floor. If RC3 can hold his own in the post and provide some modicum of rim protection, he puts opposing C's in a world of hurt on offense. There's no way that guys like Haas and Hammons can stick with Carter at the 3-point line, much less contest his shot while still being able to prevent him from getting to the rim. There's a lot of different thing that a coach can do with a multi-dimensional big man who can guard 5's while being able to handle, shoot and pass.

The real question to me is whether Maryland would be better off playing Carter at the 5 than a future lottery pick like Diamond Stone. RC3 is versatile enough that he can make their super-sized front-line work as a 4 but imagine how much space he would create for guys like Melo Trimble, Rasheed Sulaimon and Jake Layman at the 5. According to the numbers at hooplens.com, Maryland has a slightly better offensive rating (1.16 PPP vs. 1.12) and they are about the same on defense (0.94 PPP vs. 0.95) when Carter and Layman are on the floor and Stone and Damonte Dodd - their two traditional 5's - are off. They haven't played a huge number of possessions with that line-up (165) but the fact that they can at least stay even with it gives Mark Turgeon a very interesting card he can deploy to alter the dynamic of the game.

The way the game is going, I'm not sure how much value a traditional 5 adds over a small-ball 5 unless they are a really special player. Diamond Stone is a better interior player on both sides of the ball than Carter but Carter is a better perimeter player on both sides of the ball than Stone. Just as important, the difference between Stone and Carter on the interior is way smaller than the difference between the two players on the perimeter. Here's another way to look at it - Carter is 235 pounds with a 7'3 wingspan and Stone is 255 pounds with a 7'4 wingspan and I'm not sure the extra 20 pounds and one inch of reach makes up for the dramatic differences in skill and athleticism. 

My guess is that RC3 is ultimately going to come off the bench at the next level as a 4/5 but if a true 5 doesn't project as a high level two-way player (which means he will ultimately be a bench player on a good team) than I'd rather my backup 5 provide more line-up versatility. This is a unfair because of the age gap but RC3 is a better NCAA player than Stone right now and I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being the better NBA player. 

Warriors vs. Thunder

1) Kevin Durant on Draymond Green

Billy Donovan made the initial salvo when it comes to the chess match between the two coaches by starting KD on Green on defense. That was a great adjustment by the OKC coaching staff and it had a number of benefits for them over the course of the game. The most important was that it allowed them to switch the Draymond/Steph Curry pick-and-roll without having to contort the rest of their defense. That's the John Stockton to Karl Malone P/R combo of the modern NBA and the only way to even try and defend it is to switch it and let the other 3 defenders stay at home on their man. Beating the Warriors starts with figuring out how to contain that P/R and putting either your SG or your SF on Draymond is the best counter I've seen for it yet.

What really makes it effective is Draymond doesn't have the height to be a go to post scorer and take advantage of the mismatch. For one thing, he's only 6'6 and KD is 6'11. Guarding Draymond with a PF is playing right into the Warriors hands because he'd much rather have the speed edge than the power edge on offense and he's a better defender when he's giving up size than when he's giving up speed. There are 3 other storylines to this match-up that will be important to watch going forward:

1 - Can KD keep Draymond off the offensive glass? KD is used to using his supernatural length to be a factor on the boards but he has to put a body on Draymond, especially late in the game. Not doing that in the last 2 minutes of the 4Q resulted in Draymond keeping the possession alive and eventually finding Steph for a lay-up.

2 - Can Russ handle Draymond in the box? The Warriors didn't try to exploit the mismatch on the switch too much in this one and that's one adjustment to the Thunder's adjustment that they can make going forward. Draymond isn't a great back to the basket guy but he does have a significant height advantage on Russ and if he can pick up any cheap fouls on the switch that would be huge, especially considering the reckless style that he plays leaves him more vulnerable to foul trouble. The one thing the Thunder can't do is start doubling him in the box because you want to make him beat you as a scorer and not a passer.

3 - Can KD handle Steph on the switch? Sometimes he did on Saturday and sometimes he didn't. A lot of it was hand down man down but a lot of it was just Steph's ability to hit stupid shots. There's a very good chance that the final minutes in a few games of a potential WCF comes down to Steph going 1-on-1 against KD. The Narrative kind of writes itself with that one.

Steph Curryhttps://t.co/jMBjXb04A1

— Bre (@bre_88) February 7, 2016

2) Serge Ibaka on Harry Barnes

The domino effect of putting KD on Draymond was that it left OKC's PF guarding GSW's SF and that was a little more troubling for the Thunder. Golden State squeezed a lot of offense out of Harry B in the first half because Serge was very uncomfortable chasing him around screens and guarding him 25+ feet from the basket. On the other side of the floor, it's not like the Thunder were going to run a lot of offense through Serge anyway, regardless of who was on him. Barnes and Ibaka are two huge X factors in a potential playoff series and I don't think OKC can win if this happens consistently:

Barnes: 19 points and 4 rebounds on 13 shots
Serge: 8 points and 3 rebounds on 5 shots

When it comes down to making adjustments in a 7-game series, it all comes down to the domino effect. One switch has a cascading effect on everyone else in the line-up and shoring up a weakness in one spot can create one somewhere else if you aren't careful. That's what makes going up against the Warriors so tough and why it's going to be almost impossible to beat them 4 out of 7 times - they don't have a lot of discernible weaknesses in their line-up so Steve Kerr can make just about any type of adjustment over the course of a series and not worry about negative side-effects. That's what happened against Memphis and Cleveland - Kerr made the right adjustment and the opposing coach couldn't find an adjustment to his adjustment because there was nothing to exploit.

Here's where things stand with Golden State at the moment: You need a perimeter defender on Draymond but you still need a perimeter defender on Klay, Steph and Barnes, which leads me to my next point.

3) You aren't going to beat the Warriors playing 3-out

That was the story of last year's playoffs to me. A bigger team can't exploit the Warriors lack of size upfront without giving up too much on the other end of the floor. If you are going to beat Golden State playing two big men at a time, you need two big men who are elite post threats, elite passers, elite perimeter defenders and elite interior defenders. You need two guys who can give you all the pluses of having extra size on one end without any of the minuses of playing all that size on the other. In other words, if you cloned Karl Towns you might have a chance to beat Golden State playing 3-out.

Maybe San Antonio can do it. Maybe. They at least have four big men who can legitimately kill you in the post and whom can all play high-low and at least space the floor out to 20+ foot to give their frontcourt partner a chance. The question with all of their big men is what happens on defense. I'm not sure any of their 5 bigs - Duncan, LMA, West, Diaw and Boban - can guard 25+ feet from the basket and only Duncan and Boban provide much rim protection.

That goes double for the Thunder because their big men can't even beat you with size on offense anyway. The only one you would be comfortable posting up is Kanter and we already know the types of problems that he can have on defense. The story of the first half of this game was the way the Warriors absolutely shredded the Thunder's two big men line-ups. It doesn't matter whether you are playing Kanter and Adams against Golden State's 1rst or 2nd unit or some combination of the two. They can't play together in this series.

4) Billy Donovan can see two feet in front of his face

As someone who watched plenty of Florida basketball over the years, I wasn't too big a fan of the Donovan hire. This wasn't a Brad Stevens at Butler situation - Donovan wasn't winning all those games at the NCAA level because he was running rings around people with his X's and his O's. He won all those games because he had better players and he got out of their way when he could. It's no knock on the coach to say that a lot of guys could win at the NCAA level with Joakim Noah and Al Horford upfront. That's just unfair.

But while Donovan hasn't exactly lit the world on fire in his first few months in the NBA, he does seem to be learning. He learned and made adjustments in real-time over the course of the game on Saturday, which is not something I was seeing Scotty Brooks doing all that much. The story of the first-half was some of the silly line-ups that Donovan had out there - you can't have Russ and KD out at the same time against Golden State, you can't play Adams and Kanter together and you don't want to have all your bad defensive players in the same line-up.

great lineup by okc. GSW has to decide whether to roast kanter, payne, or singler and maybe that will confuse them.

— ☕netw3rk (@netw3rk) February 7, 2016

None of that happened in the 2nd half, which is why the game got so interesting, Donovan cleaned up a lot of his mistakes and he stopped giving the Warriors any own goals. His first half line-ups still probably cost them the game but that's not a big deal as long as he uses it as a learning experience. That's what regular season games are for - figure out what works and what doesn't work. The Thunder had a lot of things that didn't work tonight, which might be the most encouraging aspect of the game for them considering how close the final score still was.

5) Steph looked mortal in this one

The flip side for the Warriors is that they still won the game despite the MVP scoring 26 points on 25 shots and being only +3 in 38 minutes. Steph is such an alien on offense that it's hard to analyze anything that he does one way or the other. He missed a lot of stupid shots but those are the shots that he usually makes at a crazy high clip and you have to figure they will start going down more often the next few times they play OKC. That said, I do think that the switching defense did have some effect on Curry. That's not to say that he's not going to get his points next time but that the odds are so much in his favor that you have to do everything in your power to even them out on every possession just to give yourself a chance. I don't like trapping him on the pick because that lets him split it or start ball movement that winds up in an open 3 and I don't ever want to have a big man guarding him on the P/R if I can help it.

6) Golden State can't get cute on KD and Russ on D

It's the same thing with OKC's two superstars. This game featured the best 3 scorers in the world (all of whom are 27 years old and at the very peak of their abilities) which means you never want to give them something easy because they can beat you when you are giving them something hard or nothing at all. Golden State started the game with Steph on Russ and Harry B on KD and there's no reason for them to do that. It's nice that Steph is more willing to guard his man on D and not count on Klay to switch but discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to guarding Westbrook.

As far as Harry Barnes goes, it's the same thing as with LeBron in last year's Finals. He can't guard elite players and there's no reason to make him do so when you have Andre Iguodala on the bench. The Warriors are probably going to want Iguodala to mirror KD's minutes as much as possible. Or at least Livingston. They tried Draymond on KD in the 4Q and that didn't really work. KD's longer and faster than him - he can shoot over the top of him and get around him pretty easily and he's pretty immune to Draymond's bully-ball tactics on D. KD is going to get his but you at least want to give him a challenge. He had 40 points, 14 rebounds and 5 assists on 25 shots on Saturday, though the 5 turnovers is something he's going to want to clean up.

Defensive Player of the Year is probably going to come down to Kawhi Leonard vs. Draymond Green and I think I'd give the award to the guy who can do the best job on KD. Being able to play great D against garbage teams is great but who cares really. Let me see you play great D against the best of the best.

7) Dion Waiters couldn't guard Klay Thompson

Thompson didn't have a huge game from an efficiency perspective (18 points on 15 shots) but I thought he was able to pretty comfortably shoot over the top of Dion Waiters, which wasn't a huge surprise since he's 6'7 and Dion is 6'4. Klay is another X factor in this series because the Thunder need to use Russ and KD to try and corral Steph and they really can't afford to switch either on to the Warriors 2nd option. What Steve Kerr is really going to want from Klay is the ability to dictate line-ups - Klay needs to make Andre Roberson guard him and force Waiters, Singler or Morrow off the floor if they get stuck in this match-up. That would force Billy Donovan into a lot of tough decisions and that's why I think OKC is going to have to make a trade to find a legit 3-and-D wing.



I've been saying this for awhile - Courtney Lee for Mitch McGary makes too much sense not to happen.

8) The ghosts in the box score

Both teams had a pretty clean slate of health coming into this game and there were only two notable absences from the proceedings - Roberson and Festus Ezeli. OKC is going to have to be very careful when it comes to using Roberson in a series because of how comfortable GSW is going to the no-respect defense and ignoring bad shooters. I think where he'd have the most value is on the 2nd unit when he could guard Shaun Livingston and where his lack of shooting wouldn't be as big an issue with OKC going to smaller line-ups. The Warriors didn't really miss Ezeli in this one because of the unexpected emergence of Marreesse Speights but he would provide a nice counter at the C position because he gives you more speed than Bogut and more defensive ability than Speights.

9) Can Andrew Bogut play in this series?

Bogut had the worst plus/minus (-11 in 20 minutes) of any of the Warriors starters and I don't think that was a coincidence. The Thunder don't have a post scorer that Bogut really needs to guard in their starting line-up - Adams is more of a roll man and they were able to put Bogut in the 2-man game with either KD or Russ and really expose his lack of footspeed. Nor is he much of a threat on offense in the 2-man game, which is big because the only way for the Warriors to get the Thunder big men involved in the pick-and-roll on defense is to utilize Bogut heavily. When you start breaking down the minutes and allocating a huge chunk of the ones at 5 to Draymond Green, I wonder whether the Warriors need Bogut at all in a series against the Thunder. I'd rather have Festus or Draymond out there and Speights has shown he can be a nice little change-up too. I wouldn't be surprised if A) the Thunder played him off the floor or B) Kerr pre-emptively took him off the floor like he did against the Cavs in the Finals.

10) KD at the 4 and all 4-out, all the time

That was the big take-away from this game for me. If OKC's going to pull off the upset, they are going to need Kevin Durant to play 40+ minutes a night at the PF position. I'm not wasting any time not playing optimal line-ups against the Warriors and the only reason he's coming off the floor at all is so that he doesn't collapse on the court. If it came down to a Game 7 in Oracle, which would be one of the biggest games in the history of the NBA, I'm coming into the game thinking that KD is playing all 48. Russ needs a break because of the way he plays but KD is just so valuable on and off the ball for the Thunder that they can use him even when he's not dominating the ball and he's taking a few plays off.

With KD at the 4, you run 4/5 pick-and-rolls with either Kanter, Adams or Ibaka right down the Warriors throat and you run Bogut off the floor. All you need from there is enough shooters to space the floor and that's where a trade comes in. The problem with running KD at the 4 full-time is that the Thunder barely have enough wings to throw out there when they are running 3-out, much less 4-out. They are one piece (a 6'5+ wing who can give them 40+ minutes of versatile D and 40+ minutes of 3-point shooting) from being right there with the Warriors and giving us possibly the greatest playoff series in NBA history. Let's make this happen and let's have these teams play 7 times in June.