A few key differences separate Dwight Howard and Andrew Bynum, who is fancied during happy times as the Magic center’s potential equal. But one general disparity is this: No opponent game-plans around exploiting a Howard weakness on defense like it does with Bynum.

For the second straight postseason, a Lakers opponent armed with an elite mid-range shooter — the Thunder this season, the Hornets last season — designed much of its offense around the idea that it could produce relatively easy mid-range shots by attacking Bynum on various pick plays. The Thunder were confident that Bynum would hang back rather than step out to challenge Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, and that both players — especially Durant — could get clean looks from 15 feet.

The mid-range shot is the worst shot in basketball, a low-percentage attempt that produces few free throws or offensive rebounds. Most teams that shoot a lot of them are bad offensive teams. But it’s a shot every team must have in its arsenal, especially against an opponent like the Lakers, who have two elite wing defenders and two 7-footers capable of blocking everything at the rim.

The Thunder are one of the few teams with the personnel to exploit this mid-range weakness in an efficient way. They have one deadly shooter (Durant), another star fast becoming deadly from that range (Westbrook) and a center — Bynum’s opposite number — who can serve as the final screener on lots of different play types. This stuff destroyed the Lakers their 119-90 loss in Game 1 on Monday. It resulted in some communication breakdowns and a few mid-stream strategy changes in the second half — the kind of defensive chaos that hurt the Lakers against Chris Paul and the Hornets last season and ultimately undid them amid a hail of wide-open shots against Dallas in the second round.

The attack began right away, and, notably, it did not begin with a pick-and-roll:

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Russell Westbrook has dramatically improved his shooting percentage on attempts from 15-19 feet. (Larry W. Smith/EPA)

Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook has been criticized about as much as any star player in the last year. He has been labeled a selfish gunner, either unwilling to share with Kevin Durant or incapable of playing as a pass-first point guard surrounded by elite scorers.

When the Thunder’s offense collapsed repeatedly in crunch time during last year’s playoffs, the debate centered on Westbrook’s shot selection. Some of this was justified. As I’ve written before in detail, Westbrook is not a natural passer on the level even of Oklahoma City shooting guard James Harden. The 23-year-old Westbrook is learning how to play point guard in the NBA on the fly, and for most of his four-year career, he has been able to make only the simple passes, not the tough ones really great point guards can make because they see tricky passing angles or create them by dribbling in a certain path.

And Westbrook does shoot too many jumpers early in the shot clock. It’s a bad habit, one the Thunder live with because pulling the leash too tightly on his shooting might limit the all-around explosiveness that makes him such a terror off the dribble.

The anti-Westbrook screaming last season ignored a few things:

• The Thunder had one of the five best offenses in the league.

• Durant could not get open late in games against the best defenders, and he wasn’t a good enough ball-handler at that point for the Thunder to give him the ball at mid-court and ask him to create.

• Oklahoma City’s big men provide little interior offense, either as cutters or as pick-and-roll partners in the lane.

• Coach Scott Brooks’ late-game playbook wasn’t exactly Popovichian.

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Dirk Nowitzki and Kendrick Perkins scuffled early in Game 2 of the Mavericks-Thunder series Tuesday night, sparked in part by the Thunder center’s shoving his forearm into Nowitzki’s lower back while fighting for position under the rim. The two had been jostling before that, and Serge Ibaka also clipped Nowitzki in the face while challenging a Dirk jumper — an unfortunate thing that happens now and then when defenders try to face-guard shooters.

Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle shouted at Perkins during the incident and was upset in his typically even-handed way after the game:

“It’s playoff basketball. It’s physical,” Carlisle said when asked about the confrontation. “I mean, we don’t like the cheap shots when they give them, and they don’t like them if we give them. That’s the nature of competition.

“Hey, I love hard play, clean, competitive playoff series. You throw the ball up and may the best team win, but the dirty bulls— has got to stop. We don’t want anybody getting hurt out there either way.”

I don’t know what precisely Carlisle is referring to when he talks about “dirty” play. The word dirty brings to mind cheap shots with the potential to cause harm. Does a very large man shoving his forearm into another very large man’s back qualify? What about some raised elbows?

SI PLAYER POLL: DIRTIEST PLAYER IN THE NBA

But dirty could also refer to more subtle rule-breaking, the kind Perkins mastered at the feet of Kevin Garnett in Boston. Folks around the league — mostly outside of Boston — have long complained about Garnett’s occasional moving screens and the extra contact he’s allowed to make when defending the pick-and-roll. Watch Garnett jump out on guards during pick-and-roll plays, and you’ll often see him place both hands on a ball-handler’s hip for just an instant. It’s not a particularly aggressive move — not a shove — but it often has enough of an impact to take that ball-handler wider than he’d otherwise like to go in trying to turn the corner. Garnett has other little tricks, scouts and coaches say, but that’s the main one I notice regularly. Read More…

Kevin Durant and the Thunder have had two solid wins over the Lakers this season. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)

Even though San Antonio is on fire, it is mandatory to refer to Thursday’s game between the Lakers and Thunder in Los Angeles as a possible Western Conference finals preview. Oklahoma City walloped Los Angeles for the second time this season, 102-93, stamping itself as a potential matchup problem for the Lakers — just as the Spurs, who are 8-2 in their last 10 games against the Thunder, present major issues for OKC.

Five takeaways from Thursday’s game:

1. The Thunder have defended the Lakers very well in three of four halves this season.

It’s a major reversal from last season, when the Lakers went 2-1 and generally torched the Thunder’s defense. The Lakers have dropped to 15th in points per possession this season, down from sixth last season, and so perhaps their inability to consistently generate good looks against the Thunder — who defeated them 100-85 last month in Oklahoma City — is merely symptomatic of the larger issue holding the team back from true contender status.

The Lakers had things rolling early Thursday, primarily because they ran a lot of pick-and-rolls, got Oklahoma City’s defense moving and fired quick-hitting passes all over the court. This is the best way to beat any team, but it’s especially important against a Thunder team that features several young defenders — power forward Serge Ibaka and guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook — who can be vulnerable on the move and against teams that space the floor well. The Lakers hurt the Thunder early on traditional guard/big man pick-and-rolls involving Ibaka and a couple of guard/guard pick-and-rolls that flummoxed Harden. Ibaka and center Kendrick Perkins still have occasional communication issues, and on one fast-moving first-quarter play they both rotated toward Pau Gasol near the foul line, leaving Andrew Bynum open for a dunk.

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OKC averages 115.2 points per 100 possessions when James Harden (above) plays alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

Basketball is a process at the NBA level. It was for the post-”Decision” Heat, though Miami’s three stars are such great players that they spoiled us by pushing the team to an elite level last season even as they learned on the fly. Some talents mesh more easily than others, but for any set of devoted players and coaches, time spent working together will lead to learning and (hopefully) more positive results.

Watching the Thunder finish one assist shy of their season high while whipping Miami 103-87 on Sunday served as a reminder of how Oklahoma City is still growing, if only because of how young its core players are and how inexperienced coach Scott Brooks is relative to some of his peers among the NBA’s elite teams.

The Thunder live at the foul line, but they got there just 23 times against Miami on Sunday. Oklahoma City, over the last two seasons, had been just 15-18 when attempting 23 or fewer foul shots and 23-22 when attempting 25 or fewer. In keeping the Thunder off the line, defenses generally find themselves facing a shaky offense dependent on isolations and predictable play-calling — an offense that ranks last in the percentage of baskets that come via assists.

The Heat limited the Thunder at the foul line but nonetheless watched Oklahoma City record 26 assists on 39 baskets and score at a rate well above its league-leading points-per-possession mark. It was, to be frank, a scary indication of how good the Thunder can become offensively as their three core scorers improve as all-around players and offer Brooks more creative ways in which to use them.

Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden have logged 945 minutes together in 49 games this season after sharing the court for just 972 minutes last season, according to NBA.com’s stats database. The trade of Jeff Green last season and injuries to both Eric Maynor and Thabo Sefolosha this season have had something to do with this development, but the Thunder brain trust understood that the team would never reach its ceiling until Brooks could comfortably play the trio together for as many minutes as possible. Read More…

Tony Parker's ability to penetrate in isolation and pick-and-roll plays drives the Spurs' offense. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

Incredibly, we are entering the home stretch of the regular season, which means it will soon be time to start looking ahead at potential playoff matchups. Talking heads love discarding the NBA regular season as meaningless, but actual evidence suggests regular season results tell us very important things about some head-to-head matchups. Trends from the first 82 games last season should have alerted us that the Grizzlies would be huge problems for the Spurs in the first round, and that a Hawks team willing to give Jason Collins heavy minutes against Dwight Howard would have a very good shot at upsetting a superior — in the big picture — Magic team.

On Friday in Oklahoma City, we got our latest reminder of another solidifying trend: The Thunder have a Spurs problem, and specifically, a major problem defending the Spurs. San Antonio has won five of its last six games against the Thunder, and eight of the last 10 dating back to the 2009-10, though San Antonio’s 3-1 mark against the 2009-10 Thunder probably doesn’t have much relevance now.

Taking too much from a five- or six-game sample size can be dangerous, and when you dig into the numbers and the tape, you notice a few variables that at first appear telling flip-flop completely over the next game or two. A random blowout or two can skew the entire sample, though this season’s blowout was actually the Thunder’s lone win in the series over the last two years, an early January romp in which Gregg Popovich threw up white flag and played his bench almost the entire second half.

Still, a few troubling trends have started to emerge for the Thunder:

• Oklahoma City cannot guard the Spurs, especially from three-point range. The Spurs have lit up the Thunder in three games this season to the tune of 107.1 points per 100 possessions, a mark better than that of the league’s best offense, and the worst such figure the Thunder has surrendered to any team they have played more than once, per NBA.com’s stats database. Of particular notice: San Antonio, which thrives on dribble-penetration and open three-pointers, has shot 28-of-57 (49 percent) from three-point range so far against the Thunder. Read More…

It’s time to give up trying to figure out the Western Conference and just enjoy the ride, as 11 teams battle for eight playoff spots, and two others — the Suns and Warriors — improbably lurk just one game behind the 11th-place Trail Blazers in the loss column. I can’t remember a season in which it has been so difficult to get a firm grip on a simple question: How good is Team X? This is especially so in a lockout-shortened season, when veteran teams may well be saving something for the playoffs.

We’re nearly 40 games into this thing, and I feel comfortable saying two things about the Western Conference:

The Thunder are clear favorites, but their D needs improvement. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE/Getty Images)

1. The Thunder, as we all expected, are the clear favorites. They’re 31-8, rolling to home-court advantage, and even if their scoring margin (plus-6.0 points per game) paints them as a team that really should be something like 27-12 and not all that far ahead of their conference peers, that scoring margin is still nearly two full points ahead of the Spurs’ second-best mark.

That said, the Thunder, as documented here and here, are riding a ridiculous wave of super crunch-time play that has pushed their record above where it probably should be. They remain a so-so defensive team, except in the final minutes of close games, when they turn into the 2008 Celtics. They struggle to find any scoring at all beyond their top three players; Oklahoma City piled up 115 points last night against the Suns, and only five of their players scored any points. Floor-spacing can be an issue, Russell Westbrook remains addicted to pull-up 20-footers in the first five seconds of the shot clock and the three core big men –Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison — are almost total non-threats on the pick-and-roll.

If this team really has another gear on defense, as perhaps evidenced by its crunch-time play, they might be able to waltz through this conference. If they’ve been lucky, they could be had. Read More…

It happened again Monday night: Oklahoma City’s defense, which has been mediocre all season, turned monstrous in crunch time against Dallas, holding the champs scoreless over the final two minutes and to 3-of-9 shooting over the last five minutes of yet another close Thunder win. As I noted prior to its game on Monday, the Thunder have been doing this all season, and they’re now a ridiculous 15-4 in games in which the scoring margin reached five points or fewer during the last five minutes. That’s the best such record in the league, and the surprise has been that the Thunder’s defense has been the driving force behind this improbable — and semi-lucky — record in close games.

The Thunder rank just 13th overall in points allowed possession, but they rank either first or second during crunch time, depending on how you define “crunch time” in terms of scoring margin and time remaining. Some of this is surely due to luck, and the numbers will trend the other way at some point. But it’s worth looking at what the Thunder are doing on these possessions, and a few possessions against Dallas illustrate their late-game principles — and ways in which the Mavs, and future opponents, can exploit them.

Let’s start with Dallas’ final two meaningful possessions, since NBA fans love to start at the end, anyway. Here’s a key Dirk Nowitzki turnover with about 1:20 to go:

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Prior to Saturday, the Thunder had perhaps the best defense in the league near the end of close games.

The Western Conference has unfolded in a predictable way, with the young Thunder, carrying over nearly their entire roster from last season, distancing themselves from a pack of teams either dealing with age, injuries, controversy, protective masks (have you heard?) or general craziness.

Rivals are searching for cracks in Oklahoma City’s 29-8 record, and so the league perked up a bit on Saturday, when the Thunder finally faltered down the stretch in a close loss to Atlanta. Before that game, the Thunder had been a league-best 13-3 in games in which the scoring margin fell to three or fewer points (in either direction) during the final three minutes, per NBA.com‘s detailed clutch numbers.

They had been even better — 10-2 — in games in which the margin had dwindled to a single point during the final three minutes. Kevin Durant has emerged as the league’s most feared closer, and with occasional scoring help from Russell Westbrook and James Harden, the Thunder have consistently bailed themselves out of close games in the last couple of minutes. Were they lucky? Was their plus-5.9-per-game scoring margin — far below those of the Heat, Bulls and Sixers and not much higher than the Trail Blazers’ or Spurs’ — an indication that they weren’t as good as their record?

The focus on Durant’s crunch-time scoring — and the crunch-time bricks he and Westbrook tossed up against Atlanta — missed the more important element of the Thunder’s crunch-time success so far: Their defense, mediocre overall, had been perhaps the best in the league near the end of close games. Read More…

Despite all the scrutiny, Russell Westbrook is only 23 and already ranks among the top 15 guys in the league. (Brett Deering/Getty Images)

Only LeBron James has received more scrutiny among NBA players over the last six months or so than Russell Westbrook. That scrutiny has focused mostly on Westbrook’s alleged inability to balance his desire for stardom with his basketball duty to pass the ball to Kevin Durant.

Generally overlooked amid the simmering Durant-Westbrook chatter is the fact that the Thunder have the most efficient offense in the league so far this season after ranking in the top five overall last season. The Thunder have issues, but scoring is not one of them. The Westbrook-Durant pairing, for all the warts and media hand-wringing, is leading the league’s best offense right now.

And so the Thunder did what any smart franchise would do: They locked up Westbrook with a five-year, max-level extension worth nearly $80 million. They’re confident that a guy who just turned 23 will continue to grow into the NBA’s most demanding position — a position the Westbrook did not play until he reached the pros. Westbrook did not wait until the end of the year to push for the pumped-up maximum deal he could have gotten under the new Derrick Rose rule (five years, $94 million), but regardless, the extension means the Thunder have about $48 million committed to just five players for 2013-14. James Harden, Serge Ibaka and Eric Maynor are less than a year away from being extension-eligible, and it’s an open question whether the Thunder can afford their entire core — a question that turns on how fast the luxury-tax level rises, and how healthy the Oklahoma City market is.

But you don’t preemptively answer that question by low-balling your second-best player. Someone was going to offer Westbrook a maximum deal, and though a rival team couldn’t match the Thunder’s hefty offer, Oklahoma City mitigated that issue by securing Westbrook for an extra season at something less than a Rose-level rate.

There are warts with Westbrook’s game, and they became clearer when you watch hours of tape of him on Synergy Sports, as I have over the last few weeks. Two stand out: Read More…