The Thunder, Serge Ibaka, posting and passing

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Zach Lowe of Grantland wrote a really interesting piece today about the post-up game in today’s NBA, and where the next offensive evolution is going to be.

Post-ups appear to be dying, and on the surface, these playoffs read like their obituary.

But no basketball skill ever goes extinct, and if you view these playoffs as a window into the league’s future, you can see a world in which the post-up makes a comeback — especially in the hothouse of the postseason.

The whole thing is really fascinating to apply directly to the Thunder. They added their first ever true back-to-the-basket scoring big at the trade deadline last year in Enes Kanter, and will likely have that as more of a focus in the offense than ever.

And as you watch what’s working in this season’s playoffs, you can see the versatility of two-way capable players really standing out. One dimensional players don’t seem to have much of a place. Tony Allen was huge for a couple games, but one little tweak and the Warriors schemed him out of Game 4 (and then of course he got hurt). Just imagine how opposing teams would’ve handled Andre Roberson in the playoffs had the Thunder stuck to starting him. They could literally play any player they wanted and the Thunder wouldn’t have been able to expose that matchup.

The Thunder’s preferred starting lineup last season — Westbrook, Roberson, Durant, Ibaka and Adams — had two dynamic offensive players in it. It had three guys that could neither handle or really pass (Adams can pass a little). Now, the lineup was really effective, but it also was going to face problems most likely in the playoffs.

Serge Ibaka is an offensively capable player, though. He’s one of the best knockdown shooters in the game, and expanded out to be almost a 40-percent shooter from 3 this season. But if the Thunder offense is going to evolve, so is he. And I’m not talking about the thing you might think.

For so long, the gripe with Ibaka has been his lack of a post game. His inability to go back-to-the-basket was seen as his most obvious offensive limitation, and the thing he needed to develop most. I’ve never subscribed to that much, and when he started shooting more 3s, I saw that as a much bigger and better development.

Ibaka’s next evolution doesn’t need to be on the block. It needs to be passing. Consider this from Lowe’s piece:

A few executives have dumped the term “stretch 4” altogether and replaced it with “playmaking 4” — a term I’m officially stealing right now. Shooting is nice, but it’s not enough anymore as defenses get smarter, faster, and more flexible working within the loosened rules. Spot-up guys have to be able to catch the ball, pump-fake a defender rushing out at them, drive into the lane, and make some sort of play. If they can’t manage that, a possession dies with them.

“In a playoff series, you can figure out shooting,” Karl says. “You just cover Kyle Korver. All that cute stuff they ran for him all year long — they only get that once in a while now. The shooters who have playmaking ability — those are the guys that are really kicking ass.”4

When everyone has to cut, move, and defend, having a hole in your game becomes almost untenable — especially in the playoffs. Tony Allen was essential to Memphis — right until the Warriors schemed him off the court by ignoring him to load up on the strong side.

“When I played, you had a lot of players who could just do one thing,” Vandeweghe says. “That’s much harder today.”

What has made two of the most dominant teams in recent memory — the Spurs and this season’s Warriors — so dynamic and electric is their ability to put five “live” players on the floor. They have handling guards that can create, shoot and score, but don’t limit themselves with one-way players. And as the cherry on top, they both have power forwards that can run the offense on their own. The Rockets have become a strikingly dynamic team by using Josh Smith and Terrence Jones as playmakers. Blake Griffin ran point guard for two games for crying out loud.

Ibaka is a bad passing player. He averaged 0.9 assists per game this season, and his career-high is 1.0, which came two seasons ago. Before that it was 0.5, 0.4 and 0.3. Per SportVU, Ibaka averaged 41.9 passes per game last season, and only 1.8 assist opportunities per game. Compare that to Draymond Green, who averaged 51.6 passes per game and 6.7 assist opportunities. And the raw passes per game number for Ibaka doesn’t tell the story, because so many of those were dribble hand-offs, a staple in Scott Brooks’ Thunder offense.

The ball essentially does one of two things when it finds Ibaka: 1) It gets put up or 2) it stops as he searches out someone else to give it to. He did sort of show growth with pump-faking and putting the ball on the floor, but almost always, that play ended with him taking a shot. You would never see an instance of Ibaka pumping, drawing the help defender, and then dropping a bounce pass or throwing a lob to the big waiting in the dunk spot.

(The Thunder totally get this, by the way. It’s a big reason they drafted Mitch McGary, who has some of that playmaking 4 potential. McGary is a good handler and a very good passer. His growth needs to be extending his range to force defenses to cover him from 15-20 feet, creating more space.)

Now, this is not to say Ibaka doesn’t need to improve on the block some. I think back on the way the Rockets adjusted against the Thunder in the 2013 playoffs, using James Harden on Ibaka. The Thunder posted Ibaka the first play of the game and the first play of the second half, and that was it. Ibaka and the Thunder couldn’t expose that mismatch.

But as the Thunder offense looks to grow, most posting isn’t the solution. Kanter solves a lot of that already, and he’s a better passer than some think. It’s that Ibaka has to be able to evolve his skillset to maximize the other four players on the floor. Ibaka draws defensive attention. But what’s he going to do with that? “The thing I am sold on completely,” Karl says in Lowe’s piece, “is that today, you need as much passing on the court as possible.”

Sam Presti’s vision for the Thunder offense is a more connected unit, working cohesively together. It’s not just that more passing and movement happens, it’s that the five players on the court at any given time blend, sewn together by the ball rather than it being something that divides roles and opportunities. For that to happen, the personnel has to improve. Because more passing doesn’t do the Thunder much good if the ball keeps ending up with Andre Roberson. Or Ibaka in a position where he isn’t open to shoot. Brooks used to say Ibaka doesn’t do well when he has to play in clutter. And that’s because if he couldn’t take an open shot, he didn’t know what to do with it. That needs to change.