As the Miami Heat held off the Oklahoma City Thunder to go up 2-1 in the NBA Finals last night, it should occur to everyone that there’s a fatal flaw in OKC coach Scott Brooks‘ choice of primary defender on LeBron James. While Kevin Durant is a great offensive player and competent defender, there is no way on heaven and earth that he should be guarding Lebron 80% of the time during the game.
Why is this? It’s because Durant inevitably ends up fouling LeBron on his drives to the basket. OKC cannot afford to have their best player routinely in foul trouble as evidenced by the last two games. Durant’s absence has killed the Thunder momentum at crucial moments. The seemingly obvious choice would be to put Durant on Dwyane Wade and move Thabo Sefolosha to James. Problem is, Durant doesn’t have the perimeter quickness to guard Wade. So this becomes a gigantic Catch-22 for Brooks (who is being outcoached by Erik Spoelstra … take 20 laps Scottie!).
Add to that Brooks’ weird rotation of Kendrick Perkins and Serge Ibaka at the end of games and you get an interesting problem to solve. This, by no means, is meant to imply that the Thunder are out of it … not by a long shot. It will be interesting to see if Brooks can adjust to what Miami is doing in the next day and a half.
