Monday Musings: Two teams, two big worries

The Thunder entered the season with high expectations after their surprising 2009-10 campaign. (NBAE via Getty Images)

Much of the NBA world spent the weekend listing all of the things wrong with the Miami Heat, who are just 6-4 and have beat only one playoff contender. The Miami scrutiny is to be expected, even if the rush to condemn the experiment a failure — or even to speculate about its possible failure — is obviously premature. 

But there are two teams who deserve just as harsh an appraisal as the season hits the 10-game mark: the Orlando Magic and the Oklahoma City Thunder. One was seen as the league’s best young team, a popular choice to jump all the way to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference and challenge the Lakers. The other was seen as perhaps the league’s only team in playoff form during the preseason. 

But the outlook for both teams has flipped, and at this point, it’s worth wondering if early-season flaws are signs of larger problems, and not just the fluky results of tiny sample sizes. 

The bigger story is in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder’s 5-4 record masks a team that, right now, looks lottery-bound. The Thunder rank 28th in points allowed per possession; only the Suns and Kings have been worse defensively. Opponents are torching the Thunder from all over the court, but especially at the rim and from three-point range — the two areas good defensive teams emphasize shutting down. Opponents have hit nearly 44 percent of their threes against Oklahoma City — the worst mark in the league – and no team has allowed more shots at the rim. 

The Thunder’s shocking leap last season came as the result of a totally unexpected improvement on defense, where they emerged as a top-10 team that got their arms and hands everywhere. They have been a disaster this season, and there is no clear reason why at this point. If Nick Collison, who missed Oklahoma City’s first eight games with an injury, has this much of an impact on the Thunder’s defense, the Heat should have waited to offer him a near-maximum contract instead of signing Chris Bosh last summer. (Note for sensitive Heat fans: I’m not being serious, because there’s no way Collison’s impact on defense is this large.)

Even scarier: The Thunder’s offense does not look good enough to carry the team in the long run. The Thunder have been an inefficient team surviving only because they are getting to the foul line at a rate that would be among the highest in modern league history. That rate will creep a bit toward the mean, and when it does, the Thunder’s offense will fall apart unless it improves elsewhere. The Thunder rank 26th in field-goal percentage and last in both three-point shooting and the percentage of baskets that come after assists. 

If you watch Oklahoma City’s games, you see it: This is a team that depends on isolations and contested jump shots, and when those tactics don’t work, the Thunder can’t score. 

Let’s be clear: There is a load of talent here, and some of those negative numbers will turn themselves around. The Thunder won’t shoot 24 percent from three all season, and Kevin Durant figures to start improving on that 42 percent shooting mark pretty soon. But after nine games, this team has been bad on both sides of the ball. That’s worth worrying about.

Things aren’t as bad in Orlando, where the Magic are still an imposing defensive threat. They’re nearly impossible to score on, and when you miss, you’re not getting a second chance: The Magic have grabbed an astounding 81 percent of available defensive rebounds, a number that would be the highest in the three-point era by such a huge margin that it can’t be explained away by the league’s increasing disinterest in offensive rebounding. 

But pay attention to Orlando’s offense. The Magic rank just 18th in points per possession after finishing in the top five last season. Your initial instinct might be to dismiss the early drop as the product of a temporary cold-shooting streak. J.J. Redick and Quentin Richardson are both shooting under 30 percent, and Rashard Lewis is barely trumping them at 37 percent. Those numbers will correct themselves soon. 

Lewis, though, bears watching. He’s 31, and he is coming off the worst season of his career save for his rookie year. His field-goal percentage has declined every year since 2005-06, and his defense this season has looked shakier than ever, regardless of whether Stan Van Gundy has played at him small forward or power forward. 

About that positional tinkering: I at first chalked it up as a smart move by Van Gundy to make Orlando’s offense less predictable by occasionally shifting Lewis to the 3-spot and integrating both Brandon Bass and Ryan Anderson. But I’m wondering now if it might be Van Gundy’s way of acknowledging that Lewis is not the same player he was two seasons ago. If that’s the case, the foundation of Orlando’s offense might be in jeopardy. This is a team that succeeds in part by surrounding Dwight Howard with long-range shooters, and Lewis’ ability to provide prolific three-point shooting at power forward has been critical to that philosophy. If he can no longer do that reliably, Orlando has more tinkering to do than we thought — unless Anderson can secure consistent playing time and do the job. 

In any case, Orlando looked ready to play June basketball in October. That’s not the case anymore in mid-November.

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10 THINGS I LIKE AND DISLIKE

1. The condition of Brandon Roy’s left knee
The worst news of the weekend was the revelation that Roy has little or no cartilage left in either knee – that bone is crunching over bone at the knee joint, which will cause periodic pain and swelling. Roy left Portland’s game at New Orleans in the third quarter Saturday after feeling pain in his left knee. Even worse: He was 1-of-7 before he departed, and he drew no extra attention from New Orleans’ defense on the few possessions when he tried to attack. 

2. Serge Ibaka jumping over Gary Neal.
Wow.

3. Steve Nash, settling the Suns.
We’re all cooing over the Suns’ insane 22 three-pointers against the Lakers on Sunday, but my favorite thing about the end of the game was Nash’s calming influence on the Phoenix offense. With the Lakers rallying, the Suns were veering out of control on offense, settling for wild, contested three-pointers late in the game. 

That’s when Nash went to work. He drew Lamar Odom on a switch with about 2:30 to go and blew by him for a layup to put Phoenix up 109-104. On the Suns’ next possession, Pau Gasol took Nash on another switch, and Nash drove and hit one of those step-back 18-footers he’s hit about 3,000 times in his career.

Nash taking on big guys = gold every time.

4. Rajon Rondo’s free-throw shooting
Rondo has had a ridiculously good start to the season, and he and Chris Paul are neck-and-neck for Most Exciting Player, but Rondo’s old problems linger. He is just 12-of-26 (46 percent) at the foul line. The percentage is ghastly, and the number of attempts is too low for a player who spends so much time attacking the paint. 

The Celtics can survive Rondo’s mediocre jump shooting, but they need him to feel comfortable driving to the hoop at the end of close games. 

5. Chris Paul sweating the details
In the third quarter of New Orleans’ win over the Blazers on Saturday, Portland’s Nic Batum fumbled the ball out of bounds on the right sideline. A ho-hum turnover. But Paul saw an opportunity. He picked the ball up and whipped an overhead fastball about 30 feet to the official on the baseline, knowing the rules required the official to take the ball and hand it to a Hornets player before it could be inbounded. 

Jason Smith realized what Paul was up to. As the official ran over to the sideline, Smith sprinted into position to take the ball. He grabbed it and passed to Paul, who sprint-dribbled up the court before Portland’s defense was fully prepared and drew a quick reach-in foul on Armon Johnson. Paul screamed toward the crowd after the whistle, and the crowd roared back its appreciation. 

6. Bad shooters shooting well
Go ahead and continue to ignore Joakim Noah and Anderson Varejao as they line up 18-foot jumpers. Noah has hit 56 percent of his long two-pointers, and Varejao is shooting a scorching 58 percent on his long twos. It’s fun to see players evolve.

7. Over-switching on defense
There are good switches and bad switches in man-to-man defense, and two teams I enjoy watching — Denver and Sacramento — got burned over the weekend with too many of the latter. The Nuggets, in particular, should know better, as the over-switching has been an off-and-on issue there for years. I’m willing to give them a slight pass for now, since they’re playing with a small front line and there’s little consequence when similarly sized guys, like Al Harrington and Carmelo Anthony, pass offensive players off to each other. Maybe Denver can tighten this up when Kenyon Martin and Chris Andersen return.

8. DeMar DeRozan as a featured scorer
This might be the only reason to watch Toronto games, unless you enjoy breaking down horrific help defense. DeRozan isn’t lighting the world on fire. His jumper is still shaky, his Player Efficiency Rating is below league average and he’s taking on more of a burden than he should have to in his second season. 

But he’s taking it on, and he’s not falling on his face. He’s attempting more shots without seeing his shooting percentage plummet, and he’s getting to the foul line six times per 36 minutes, passing the ball a bit better and avoiding turnovers. 

DeRozan is still very raw, but when he spun and nailed a mid-range jumper over Dwyane Wade in the fourth quarter of a close game Saturday, you could get a glimpse of the next step in the progress of a troubled franchise. 

9. Andrew Bogut blogging
Where other players deal in banal observations or self-promotion on the Web, Bogut’s first entry for Inside Milwaukee is a thoughtful piece on his (very painful) summer of rehab. He takes time to address the criticism he took in some (crazy) quarters for rehabbing in Australia instead of sticking around Milwaukee, and in the process, he reveals the psychological challenges of recovering from a disastrous injury. 

10. Those player-bobblehead ads on League Pass broadcasts
I never tire of these for some reason. Other repetitive ads drive me crazy. But I always laugh when Dirk Nowiztki dives off that pier and Yao Ming guts out those push-ups. 

Of course, I felt the same way about the Kia hip-hop hamster ads last season, so perhaps my sense of humor is just juvenile.