Thank you. Reality is more fun. Kind of sort of. He stumbled upon this lineup not really using it all season (unless you want to believe he was playing 11-dimensional chess and saved it up in a Count-of-Monte-Cristo master stroke) - but hey, at least he found it, no thanks to Presti (more on him in a bit). The linchpin of it is obviously Durant - having a generational freak of nature back to the height of his powers solves a lot of problems - but it's really not dissimilar to what GS does in having lots of "Swiss army knife" type players all on the floor at the same time. Now, many are quick to say "Wow that Sam Presti is a damned genius, having found Roberson and Waiters" - it's human nature of course to attribute any event to a cause/pattern/what have you, to provide us with the illusion of control in a world in which we have precious little. However the OKC small ball strategory came about in spite of Presti. Presti's response to the Warrior's dominance last year was to throw max money at Enes Kanter - a player whom they have basically had to glue to the bench in order to have success against the Warriors. It was Donovan (a small-ball guy at heart dating back to Florida) finally abandoning Presti's sunk costs in Kanter that led to the last 2 Thunder blowouts...so good job, I guess. Although it's funny insofar as they discovered it by accident, almost the same way the Warriors discovered Draymond Green starting was way better than handing the starting job to David Lee despite his max salary.
^^^ Discovered by "accident" or "transformed" with a team plan. I dont see the accident part, because Donovan already showed ingenuity with the playing a large lineup more that usual vs the Spurs. By accident is usually reserved for changing due to an injury. I don't mean to take away the importance of Durant and WB in all this, by no means. I hope thats not why you appear to be downplaying how Donovan is outcoaching [with requisite talent] Pops and Kerr, and actually rewriting the book on defending these two top motion offenses, by focusing on guarding the weakside...hence why we see Ibaka playing weakside against both SAS and GSW, and we don't quick help coming to the strong side But go ahead and call it by accident if it helps you follow along
Donovan played his conventional/big lineup vs. the Spurs - do you think, if he had to play against them next week - he'd go back to rolling out Enes Kanter or he'd bring back his death lineup from last two games. Donovan is outcoaching them by finally departing from convention. Good on him for doing it but obviously something blocked him from doing it previously - maybe it's not an "accident" but it certainly wasn't plan A (though it is now). That's what life is like though, the Rockets in 1995 should have obviously been using Robert Horry as a PF the whole time but instead they kept starting games with Chucky damned Brown at PF. Because, you had to have a big lineup back then, cause you just...had to.
What Donovan is doing is playing GSW "small ball" but with taller, longer and faster players. Their size is allowing them to kill GS on the boards and force turnovers due to their length advantage. And their speed - especially Westbrook - is simply murdering GS. After watching the past 4 games, I believe they would be the better opponent for the Cavs in the Finals. I don't think that LeBron and Cle can handle a team with this combination of size, speed and length.
Morey drafts 6'9" Power forward. Clutchfans: "What's with Mauri and these undersized power forwards??" OKC plays listed 6'9" KD at Power forward. Clutchfans: "How exactly is OKC playing small?? KD is like 6'9 – 7'1" I like it.
Once you have 2 superstars everything you do seems right. We don't blame Presti for passing on Steph Curry, Draymond or taking Steve Adams over the Greek freak. They have a rookie head coach who and they still don't have a clear offense but they benefit by being healthy and facing a gimpy Curry + Bogut
