Jalen Williams began hammering the ball into the hardwood while standing on the center court logo.
As the last seconds of a tie game dwindled, 22-year-old Thunder guard Jalen Williams repeatedly pounded the ball into the hardwood while the Oklahoma City Thunder audience stood and buzzed with expectation on a late January night.
Jerami Grant of Portland momentarily stood in front of him. After a mere second, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suddenly raced to the top of the key, drawing his defender with him and making Grant second-guess his decision to assist in occupying the superstar guard. Consequently, against the 6-foot-5 Williams, Anfernee Simons, who was the smallest and weakest defender on the court at 6 feet 3, was forced to play as the final line of defense.
Williams dribbled twice and got up from the left wing as the game clock was about to expire. With the long, arcing 18-foot shot going through, the Thunder prevailed 111-109.
A few significant details surfaced following the win. The MVP front-runner Gilgeous-Alexander said that he was acting as a scapegoat throughout the play, with Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault calling for Williams in particular. “Obviously I have high gravity [out to the three-point line], so I just wanted to use it in that situation and try to confuse the switch and confuse the defense to get him a look he’s comfortable shooting,” said Gilgeous-Alexander.
A decoy for MVP? A playcall for Jalen Williams that beats the buzzer?
Just seconds earlier, Williams had made two jumpers from about the exact same area on the short left wing, which is his most accurate shooting location this season. Additionally, he leads all NBA guards in clutch field goal percentage among players with at least 25 attempts, hitting 69.2% in these situations this season.
Despite this, the Thunder attack may overwhelm defenses regardless of the player who touches the ball last on a particular play. That’s due to both their historically precise jump shooting, which currently ranks as the greatest in NBA history, and their chaotically altruistic style of play. They’re also employing the same plan that propelled Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors to 73 victories.
After the Thunder defeated Boston in January, Derrick White, a guard for the Celtics and a member of the All-NBA defensive team the previous season, remarked, “They do a good job of creating confusion.” “They’re a tough team to guard, and I think the whole league is trying to figure [their scheme] out.”
Throughout Golden State’s ten-year dominance, the club, led by its star point guard, frequently finished with the top three-point percentage in the league and the greatest effective field goal percentage in the NBA.
However, the Warriors’ offensive was always more complex than it first appeared. Not only did the Warriors have Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant, depending on the year, but they also had an intriguing game plan that essentially reversed important offensive ideas.
To begin with, they used the pick-and-roll less often than any other team, which makes defenses make snap judgments and is the mainstay of most NBA offenses. (This was true even though the Dubs had the best pick-and-roll team in the NBA.) They ran their stable of perimeter shooters off screens away from the ball to create looks significantly more frequently than any other team.
The turn of events? Curry and the other guards for Golden State were in charge of setting up the off-ball screens. Several times, as two defenders pursued the greatest shooter in the world, Curry, his partner, would screen and break wide open for a layup near the rim. Level of cheat code crap.
