Losing Chet is a big problem. The fix could be ‘small’

You don’t replace a player like Chet Holmgren, really. The game-breaking big man has proven such a perfect fit for the Thunder and checks so many boxes in one tidy 7-foot-1 package — as a floor-spacing 3-point shooter, as an elite rim protector, as a complementary face-up and off-the-bounce scoring threat, as the missing-piece cog who makes Mark Daigneault’s five-out offensive scheme really sing, etc. — that there aren’t very many like-for-like replacements available when he isn’t. (It’s not like you can just sign Kristaps Porziņģis, Myles Turner or Jay Huff off the scrap heap, you know?)

So after Holmgren hit the deck hard after contesting an Andrew Wiggins drive on Sunday night, needing to be helped off the court with what was later diagnosed as a fractured hip, everybody knew that a Thunder team that had risen to the top of the West behind a historically elite defense backstopped by its ascendant center would need to find another way to win. And with Oklahoma City’s two other bona fide bigs — offseason signing Isaiah Hartenstein and third-year pro Jaylin Williams — also on the shelf for at least the next few weeks, just “slot in another tall guy” isn’t an option.

Slotting in another small(er) guy, though, is.

Without the league’s No. 2 shot-blocker lurking to clean up messes at the basket, Daigneault leaned into Oklahoma City’s estimable wing depth against the Clippers on Monday. The Thunder have spent plenty of time the past few seasons playing small-and-or-thin up front — miss u, Poku — so downshifting, as Daigneault and Gilgeous-Alexander both noted Monday, isn’t as novel or shocking as it might be for other teams. So Oklahoma City started small and stayed small, fielding lineups almost entirely devoid of players taller than 6-foot-6. (We see you, Ousmane Dieng.) The bet: an armada of knife-handed maniacs on the perimeter would be able to disrupt L.A.’s offensive flow enough with active hands, early rotations and opportunistic traps to win the possession battle.

The approach paid dividends from the opening tip … which was jumped by Jalen Williams, all 6-foot-5 of him, who continued his trek up the positional mountain: point guard at Santa Clara, shooting guard as a rookie, power forward in his breakout sophomore campaign, backup center behind Holmgren to start the season, and now, starting 5. (“That’s why I gained weight,” he recently joked to The Ringer’s Zach Kram.)

Head coach Tyronn Lue understandably sought to press the Clippers’ size advantage off the rip, calling a straight post-up for 7-foot, 240-pound center Ivica Zubac. And Williams, very clearly expecting this, combined anticipation with a 7-foot-2 wingspan to get a jump on the play, slice a hand in front of Zubac, knock away the entry pass and create a turnover that got Oklahoma City off and running.

This was what you might call “setting a tone.”

Oklahoma City had already been forcing a ton of turnovers before Holmgren’s injury. In fact, prior to Sunday’s loss to the Warriors, the Thunder had created cough-ups on 19.1% of their opponents’ offensive possessions outside of garbage time, according to Cleaning the Glass. Not only is that a dramatic increase over the 15.7% mark with which they led the NBA last season; it would be the highest opponent turnover rate in the 22 campaigns for which Cleaning the Glass has data. (No team has even topped 18% for a full season since 2014-15, when Jason Kidd called an extreme high-pressure defense to leverage the length of his young Bucks, headlined by a precocious Giannis Antetokounmpo.)

The Thunder cranked up that disruption another notch on Monday. With Williams, the 6-foot-5 Alex Caruso and Dillon Jones, the just-returned 6-foot-6 Kenrich Williams and comparative giant Dieng (who goes 6-foot-10, but at a reedy 216 pounds) taking turns manning the middle — and with off-ball menaces like Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins waiting to pounce at every opportunity — Oklahoma City racked up 16 steals and 27 deflections, forcing turnovers on an eye-popping 24% of L.A.’s offensive possessions in a 134-128 win.

The pressure-bursts-pipes approach is essentially an extension of standard operating procedure for Oklahoma City, which leads the NBA in steals, blocks and deflections per game. (The last team to do that for a full season? The 2016-17 Warriors, which added Kevin Durant to the core of a 73-win behemoth and promptly became one of the greatest teams of all time.) It’s also a natural outgrowth of continuing to lean into the bedlam created by Caruso, who’s averaging 3.2 steals, 1.2 blocks and 7.4 deflections per 36 minutes of floor time, all of which is spent careening around the court like a caffeinated cartoon shot out of a cannon:

(Just as an aside: Caruso’s most frequent defensive matchups are hilarious — Zubac, the 6-foot-10 Michael Porter Jr., Deandre Ayton, Nikola Jokić, Goga Bitadze, Jonathan Kuminga, Alperen Şengün, Draymond Green … oh, and also Jamal Murray, Trae Young and Russell Westbrook. Whoever you want to annoy, frustrate and disrupt? Just send the bald guy at them.)

The choice to ratchet up the pressure even more without Holmgren produced even more turnovers. Interrupting those Clipper possessions and turning them into early offense — OKC scored 1.56 points per play in transition and finished with a 16-10 edge in fast-break points — helped the Thunder rip off an early 11-1 run to take control and build a lead that ballooned to 20 points midway through the third.

“Just kind of full throttle in it — if it doesn’t work, then obviously, we can adjust,” said Jalen Williams, who finished with 28 points, eight rebounds, six assists and two steals in 35 minutes of work, spent mostly wrestling with the significantly larger Zubac. (Daigneault praised his new starting center after the game: “He has a chance to be a great player. He might already be one. What makes him great is how well-rounded his game is. … There’s really nothing on the basketball court he can’t do.”)

“That’s what we’re doing tonight,” Williams added. “Seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work and then going from there.”

What worked: sending double- and sometimes triple-teams on post-ups from different angles; dialing up hard traps in the pick-and-roll to get the ball out of James Harden’s hands; having both low men ready to swarm as the ball entered the paint to try to get a strip, a block or a tie-up, preventing a shot from getting up in the first place.

When that doesn’t work, though, the lack of size becomes very, very clear:

After a quiet first half in which Zubac had more turnovers (four) than buckets (two), the Clippers did a better job of getting him touches in areas where he could play keep-away from OKC’s smaller defenders, allowing him to catch and finish without bringing the ball down near swiping hands. And as committed as the Thunder’s wings were to gang-rebounding, getting bodies on Zubac early to box him out and try to tap missed shots clear to teammates, the Clippers did grab 15 offensive rebounds leading to 21 points — a whopping 40.5% offensive rebound rate that, unsurprisingly, stands as the highest figure Oklahoma City has allowed this season.

Those paint points and extra possessions, combined with a hellacious second-half heater from scorching Clipper wing Norman Powell, cut OKC’s lead all the way down to one possession multiple times in the fourth quarter — underscoring how difficult and demanding it really is to spend 100-plus possessions over 48 minutes fighting up a weight class.

The Thunder were able to survive, though, thanks largely to the other key linchpin of the “go small, win big” plan: When Oklahoma City keeps the floor spread and opens things up, it gives Gilgeous-Alexander all the room he needs to drop a building on your head.

Sunday’s loss and Monday’s win were Oklahoma City’s two worst defensive games of the season thus far, even with all the forced turnovers. It doesn’t seem sustainable to need to score 1.3 points per possession to eke out a squeaker, just like it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect 45 points on 21 shots, four 3-pointers, 15 free throws and nine assists with just one turnover from SGA.

On the other hand, though, the two-time All-NBA First Team selection and reigning MVP runner-up sure does seem to expect it from himself …

… so maybe we shouldn’t short-change him. Or the rest of those Dobermans, hell-bent on winning the possession game, and with it the game, by any means necessary.

“I think what they lean back on is that they’re highly competitive,” Daigneault said after the game. “They want to win. And they’re highly connected. So they’re gonna do whatever it takes to win, and they’re gonna do it together.”

In the post-game interview, NBA TV’s Dennis Scott questioned the shelf-life of this small-ball look — one that might not necessarily have to last through Holmgren’s re-evaluation in mid-January, but that will need to function as Oklahoma City’s fastball and changeup until Hartenstein, at least, is cleared to make his debut. Realistically, Scott asked, how long can you play this way?

Gilgeous-Alexander logged the Thunder’s final deflection of the night, swatting the question away with the only answer there is: “However long we need to.”

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