Oklahoma City's Historic Defense Is A Machine, Literally.

This video was a step outside my usual box, but one I enjoyed making. Thanks to James Clark at ALL-NBA for his guidance and dedication to the video!

As always, here are all the fun extra stats and tidbits that didn’t make the cut. Think of these as the perfect sauce on a burger that puts it over the top. Enjoy!

The Best Tech Has Both:

When it comes to technology, Apple is the standard. Whether it’s a computer or an iPhone, they dominate the space. Their products are elegantly designed and highly functional—sleek with a kickass iOS.

Few defenses in NBA history have possessed elite-level hardware and software, and this Oklahoma City team has both!

1. Strength. Length. Speed: All the athletic components needed.

2. Processing Speed: Their individual and collective Intelligence.

Processing Speed:

Oklahoma City is one of the most intelligent basketball teams in the Modern Era. Rarely do you see them blow a coverage or miss a rotation; their attention to detail in KYP is unmatched.

KYP stands for Know Your Personnel:

It's an IF/THEN thought process combining an offensive scouting report and defensive coverages. IF you understand a player's strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. THEN you can apply the best defensive techniques to combat them. Here's a basic example: Malik Beasley is a better shooter than he is a playmaker, so IF there is a closeout situation with him, THEN the defender should sprint to run him off the line, turning him from a three-point shooter to a driver.

The better the offensive player, the more extensive the KYP thought process can get. For All-NBA-level players, the techniques and schemes needed to have a chance at not being embarrassed by them require all five defenders to be on the same page. Primary defenders have the undesirable job of attempting to force these elite players away from their strengths and towards whatever hint of a weakness exists. At the same time, the other four defenders must know precisely what the primary defender is attempting to do, so they can be in the proper spots to provide immediate help or rotate to help the helper.

Oklahoma City excels in these situations against the NBA elites; all five defenders consistently understand their KYP assignments and execute them flawlessly.

Athletic Outliers:

Raw tools such as strength, length, and speed are prerequisites for elite defensive players.

Between Holmgren, Hartenstein, Dort, Williams, and Gilgious-Alexander, Priest has assembled one of the league's biggest and longest starting fives in the league boasting a collective wingspan of thirty-five and a half feet. That’s an average of over seven feet per player.

And that group utilizes all that length to its advantage, generating six steals and five and a half blocks per game. Those 12 opportunities are rocket fuel for their transition offense, creating moments where their collective speed can turn defense into easy baskets.

If that starting five wasn’t scary enough, Oklahoma City also has a plethora of chaos agents they can bring in off the bench; Wallace, Joe, and Caruso possess the elite quickness needed to smother ball handlers and get into the passing lanes.

This team is built to get its hands on everything! This season, Oklahoma City generated more deflections and forced more turnovers than any other team in the league. They also scored more points off those turnovers than any other team in the league, turning their defense into an accelerant to ignite their transition offense.

And during their first round sweep of Memphis, it was more of the same: Oklahoma City forced 72 turnovers and scored 54 points off them.

No player embodies this team's defensive intensity quite like Alex Caruso. This season, he averaged a deflection every five and a half minutes, one of the top rates in the league. And so far in the playoffs, he’s found another gear, increasing his deflection rate to one every 4 minutes. The guy is absolutely unhinged out there, yet somehow he does it all under control and intelligently.

During the second half of Oklahoma City’s 29-point Game Three comeback, Caruso recorded seven deflections, and Memphis scored an utterly anemic 13 points during his 13-second half minutes.

The Most Difficult Action To Guard Requires BOTH:

Pick and roll actions have become the lifeblood of the NBA game, and no action is run more. Second Spectrum categorizes the four core actions of a basketball game as pick-and-roll, handoff, isolation, and post-up. Over 158,145 PnRs were run during this season, and the other three core actions were run for a combined 109,739 times.

OKC was the best team in the NBA this season at guarding the PnR. Almost every other guard on the Oklahoma City roster can occasionally blow up a pick-and-roll. However, exceptional pick-and-roll defense requires all five players to do three things in quick succession:

1. See the same picture. (Quickly--Remember, "Do your work early.)

2. Communicate. (Clearly--He who talks first controls the actions.)

3. React (With force--Time to put all the athleticism to work.)

Oklahoma City's pick-and-roll defense can check all three boxes: It's a potent mixture of intelligence, athleticism, and attention to detail.

Oklahoma City led the league in pick-and-roll defense, giving up a staggering 94 points for every 100 pick-and-rolls defended. It's a remarkable number when you consider the best pick-and-roll players in the league would score between 115 and 120 points with those same 100 opportunities.

You can’t just flip the defensive switch in the playoffs, especially in regards to defending the pick-and-roll; every team must build its Rolodex of habits throughout the 82-game season. That way, when the playoffs come around and everything is faster and more intense, those habits are so ingrained that they turn into instincts.

If you stop to think, “Where do I go?” “What's my next rotation?” The offense wins, and your season is over. It's pretty simple.

They consistently do the work early each possession to give themselves the best chance at success. Oklahoma City's habits are as sharp as they come, making their instincts as quick as lightning.

They have an extensive Rolodex, or as the kids would say, A deep bag, that they can get to in terms of coverages:

• 9th in Drop (40.4%)

• 14th in Switch (24.75%)

• 18th in Blitz (3.2%)

Contrast that with teams that have limited PnR defensive profiles and how it leaves them susceptible in bad playoff matchups (Edwards vs. Lakers):

• Lakers 1st in Switch (39%) and Last in Blitz (0.96%)

• Brooklyn 1st in Blitz (14%) and Last in Drop (20.7%)

Oklahoma City’s deep bag allows them to cover a wide variety of opponents, and they perform all the coverages at an elite level. They’re a daily fantasy player with a high floor and ceiling, the perfect combination.

Oklahoma City didn’t invent a new defense; there's no proverbial smoking gun here—just simple coverages executed at lightning-fast speeds by some of the best athletes in the world.

Is it possible to score on them? Sure, it's possible, but it's certainly not easy. It takes one of two things:

A special effort of individual shot-making efforts: The level of shot-making and individual skill it takes to beat this team does exist. But to beat this team four times would take a historical effort of individual brilliance.

Offensive compounding: No defense can take away everything, although Oklahoma City's defense sometimes makes me question that statement. If an offensive team can string together enough tiny wins within any given possession, they can find their way into semi-open to open shots.

However, as Oklahoma City gets into the later rounds of the playoffs, some teams can bring both elements to the table, as Doncic and Dallas did last season. Denver, Minnesota, Golden State, and Boston all fit the bill. Superstars like Jokic, Edwards, Curry, and Tatum are all capable of the individual brilliance needed, and if they get enough help from their teammates, who knows?

Marzie Says: “I Ain’t Scared Of Thunder”