Heat vs. Thunder: Oklahoma City Faces a Difficult Tradeoff Against Miami

The Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder will face off tonight in the most obviously engaging circumstances possible: as the top two teams in both conferences, as the preview of the most likely (though hardly guaranteed) NBA Finals matchup and as a conveniently condensed collision of a handful of the league's top players.

But while LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Chris Bosh and James Harden wow us with their feats of superhuman basketball strength, the entire matchup seems to lean on the give and take of Oklahoma City's lineup configurations. 

The Heat have the substantial benefit of coming into this matchup as the hands-down better team; Miami's specific positional advantages and overall effectiveness this season require opponents to adapt to them (if not their style), lest they risk being overrun by the onslaught that James and Wade trigger with regularity.

The Thunder, for all their strengths, are no exception, and the possibilities for adjustment that Scott Brooks will undoubtedly ponder seem to center around one particular tradeoff: When tasked with defending James, Wade and Bosh at the same time, how long can Brooks afford to keep James Harden on—or, by a different strand of logic, off—the floor?

On face, Harden isn't at all a subpar defender. He works hard on that end of the court, generally stays with his man and doesn't wander when in coverage. But Thabo Sefolosha has proven instrumental to the Thunder's starting five—a surprisingly delicate balance that serves as one of the league's top defensive units and OKC's most-used lineup.

According to NBA.com's statistical database, the combination of Sefolosha, Durant, Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins has allowed just 89.2 points per 100 possessions this season—a dominant mark by any standard and the saving grace that keeps the Thunder's 12th-ranked defense afloat.

Oklahoma City is a remarkably effective offensive team with Harden on the floor, but in the face of this particularly daunting opponent, the defensive tradeoff between Harden and Sefolosha may be too much for the Thunder to concede.

Yet that configuration doesn't come without its own rather substantial problems, particularly when tasked with countering the Heat.

That same lineup is among the Thunder's least effective offensive combinations (100.0 points per 100 possessions). Although Sefolosha's presence is highly valuable in containing Miami's stars, he—along with Ibaka and Perkins—puts a visible strain on Durant and Westbrook to create the entirety of Oklahoma City's offense. It's a highly successful combination in terms of net rating nonetheless, but it should be interesting to see if Durant and Westbrook have the firepower to keep up with the Heat when most of their offensive support is stripped away.

It seems rather unlikely, if only because that particular lineup is uniquely poor on the offensive glass and particularly bad at taking care of the ball—two crucial safeguards against Miami's brutally effective fast break. When Sefolosha joins the other Thunder staples in lieu of Harden, OKC's turnover rate, which is the league's worst on average this season, rises from 12.7 (a mark that would rank as the NBA's second-best) to a worse-than-the-worst 16.0. That's a profound difference in itself, but against the Heat, who average more points per minute off their opponents' turnovers than any team in the league, it could serve as the crux of a no-win dynamic.

At once, Harden and Sefolosha are both the exact players the Thunder need to play for significant minutes and the kind of limitation they may not be able to afford.