OKC Thunder needs a fully functional 'Big Three' to beat Dallas Mavericks in NBA playoffs
DALLAS — Jalen Williams took a deep breath before plunging into thought. He needed to envision how things looked when he approached the rim in Oklahoma City’s 105-101 Game 3 loss of the Western Conference semifinals. How he’d contorted his body, why he needed to, and what it often turned into.
For Williams, it hasn’t as often been the sort of circus finishes and buff plays that might’ve begged for drug tests. And for Chet Holmgren, his mythical rookie teammate, the shooting stroke that’s prompted lofty comparisons has often fallen flat.
The playoffs don’t welcome efficiency. They invite invasive adjustments, the need-to-know on every intricate detail. The angles Holmgren picks to slip out of screens, what degree of angle Williams squares his hips on a pullup jumper. The microscope of the postseason enters the grasp of private investigators disguised as coaching staffs, leaving little window to escape.
It’s especially weighed on two thirds of the Thunder’s Big Three in the second round.
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In 71 regular season games, Williams shot 50.1% on 5.2 pull-up attempts, which includes 3s. He made 52.9% of his 3.8 pull-up attempts per game inside the arc. In OKC’s second round series, Williams has connected on just 36.8% of his 6.3 attempts per game. Among the average of 3.7 attempts inside the arc, he’s made just 27.3%.
On shots inside 10 feet, Williams shot 60.5% on 6.6 attempts per game during the regular season. In this series, Williams is hitting 54.5% on 7.3 attempts a game. Williams admits he’s felt like he’s sprayed out passes to corners more than usual. But his attempts have increased, as has the need for him to bend his frame to finish signature plays.
“They got two good rim protectors on their team, so we kinda have to try and find a balance of when to attack and get angles to finish,” Williams said.
“I think I'm athletic enough to where, if I'm in the air and I know I can't (finish), I still have the option to kick the ball out. So a lot of it is, if I feel that they might block the shot — which is kind of hard to explain — but if I feel like they can affect it at all, I’m able to kick it out.”
Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford have been similarly intimidating and abrasive forces. They've met Williams vertically. They've gone chest to chest numerous times. It hasn’t helped when Dallas chooses to shrink the floor with Josh Giddey on the floor. With each time it's forced to pass out of layups or turn down dump-down passes, OKC abandons what would’ve been initial or secondary advantages in the regular season.
Few advantages came easier (and earlier) than the way the Thunder got Holmgren 3-point looks.
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His trail 3s confused defenses. His pick-and-pops forced decisions. Now, with the way Dallas has switched onto Holmgren on the perimeter, the big man has found fewer windows.
Holmgren’s two 3-point attempts in Game 3 were his fewest in any game this postseason. Holmgren only finished 15 of his 82 regular season games with two or fewer 3-point attempts. He’s shooting 23.1% on the attempts he’s gotten.
“I'm not going to get into X's and O's and everything,” Holmgren said. “But I mean, they watch film, they have good coaches, they know what we're trying to do out of those situations. It's our job just to execute them right and do what we've been doing all year.”
It’s a make or miss league. In the do-or-die postseason, shotmaking is an especially fickle thing. Despite the necessity of the looks teams once knew and the weight of any rare breakthrough attempts, Holmgren’s perspective on shotmaking has remained solid.
“It's an extremely complex game of X's and O's, and so much comes down to makes and misses too,” Holmgren said. “You miss good looks. You make bad shots. There's so much that affects how we look at outcomes. But we're going to do everything to our ability to give ourselves the best chance to win basketball games.”
The playoffs might command some degree of experience, even from the NBA’s youngest team to check off every mature team’s boxes. Those experiences might be necessary to execute during stretches like Dallas’ 16-point swing in the third quarter of Game 3, which coach Mark Daigneault called “a missed opportunity.” Or for Williams and Holmgren to connect on more of the shots that got them here.
But the Thunder and its budding stars won’t know experience until they’ve performed — and struggled — under the postseason’s all-seeing eye.
“Obviously, we would all like to have the experience of winning championships under our belt and being through certain things and seeing certain things numerous times,” Holmgren said. “But we're a young team and we haven't and we're not going to look at that as a reason that we can't go out and do what we need to do. We're gonna go figure it out.”
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Joel Lorenzi covers the Thunder and NBA for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joel? He can be reached at jlorenzi@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @jxlorenzi. Support Joel's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com or by using the link at the top of this page.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC Thunder needs a fully functional 'Big Three' to get past Mavericks
