Are OKC Thunder a Playoff Team Without Kevin Durant?
As the Oklahoma City Thunder know all too well now, there are certain words you never want to hear come out of your star player's mouth. Kevin Durant, currently nursing a severely sprained ankle that has added to the time he missed earlier this season with a Jones fracture, provided the team with a wonderful example.
"I can't play basketball. I can't run. I can't cut. I can't jump," he told NewsOK.com's Darnell Mayberry. "I'm not just sitting out just because. If I could play I would play. But I can't play."
Well, that's no good.
Durant had been out of the lineup since he suffered the supposedly mild ankle sprain against the Golden State Warriors on Dec. 18. That quote from Mayberry came seven days and four games later—on Christmas Day, in fact—and Durant still doesn't seem like he's going to return at full strength quite yet.
"He's not ready for the next step," OKC head coach Scott Brooks explained to Mayberry after Durant participated in shootaround prior to a Sunday night outing against the Dallas Mavericks. "He's reached a lot of the benchmarks. He's getting close. Each day this week he'll practice and we'll go from there."
Sitting out while his teammates lost to the Mavs made it six consecutive absences, and there's no telling how many more games he'll miss before he's ready to return. After all, the Thunder can go in one of two directions.
They can rush him back, falling victim to a sense of urgency as OKC continues to sit outside the playoff picture in the Western Conference, or they can exercise patience until Durant is at full strength and has little to no risk of another injury relapse. It's a complicated decision, one made even more difficult by some confounding factors—Durant's eventual free-agency status and Russell Westbrook's own health chief among them.
Everyone within the organization has to weigh those factors along with the question that's more key than any other: Are the Thunder good enough to make the playoffs without Durant?
If the answer is yes, then OKC should have no qualms about holding back last year's MVP.
The Motives for Rushing Him Back
It's all about maximizing the time Durant spends in Oklahoma City.
While the Thunder aren't exactly operating with a closing title window, they're still working with the looming specter of Durant's impending free agency in 2016. There will be plenty of places for him to run to two offseasons down the road, whether he's joining a big-market team like the Los Angeles Lakers or going home to the Washington Wizards. And that's why OKC has to operate with a win-now mentality at all times, a sentiment that's only reinforced by their dependence on internal improvement and hesitance to pay big bucks for free agents.
This team can make the playoffs. That's not the question so much as what happens without Durant.
Heading into games on Dec. 29, the Thunder sit at No. 10 in the Western Conference, but they're absolutely within range of making it past the 82nd game of the season. After all, the New Orleans Pelicans have the same number of wins—albeit with two fewer contests played—and the Phoenix Suns are only three games up.
With 50 outings left on the regular-season schedule, there's more than enough time to make up the gap and squeeze into the postseason with a No. 8 seed. From there, anything can happen when Durant and Westbrook are both healthy, especially given how Westbrook is playing right now. Through his first 18 appearances, the dynamic point guard is averaging 28 points, 5.7 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game with a 32.0 player efficiency rating, via Basketball-Reference.com.
That last number leaves him trailing only Anthony Davis, not just during this season but among all qualified players in NBA history.
"The first thing we need to assess when evaluating the Thunder's playoff chances is how high the bar will be set in the West," Kevin Pelton wrote in early December for ESPN.com (subscription required). "Last season, it took 49 wins for the Dallas Mavericks to hold off the Phoenix Suns for the eighth seed. The bottom of the West playoff race might not quite be so tough this season."
Nearly a month later, it appears that remains true.
Based sheerly on win-loss records, the Suns are on pace to fill in the No. 8 seed with a 46-win season, one that leaves them three victories shy of the mark set by the Dallas Mavericks' last go-round. In order to reach 46 successful outings, OKC needs to only go 31-19 during the remaining portion of the 2014-15 campaign, which means it has to play like a 51-win team. That's doable, given the history of this squad with both Durant and Westbrook on the floor.
But what does another set of projections say?
According to my FATS projections (based on historical similarities and explained in more detail here), this is how the three relevant playoff-contending teams are expected to stack up at the end of the year:
- Phoenix Suns, 44-38
- Oklahoma City Thunder, 42-40
- New Orleans Pelicans, 40-42
That puts the Thunder well within striking distance, but doesn't it seem as though the team could use some help from those superstars? Having more firepower is never a bad thing.
But if this seems pretty simple, that's only because we haven't yet looked at all of the many factors. This is still a rather complicated situation.
It's true that the Thunder could use their superstars at full strength to guarantee a playoff berth, and playing just Westbrook runs the risk of a fatigued point guard. They also need to maximize the time they're guaranteed to spend with Durant on the roster. And sitting the reigning MVP during an important part of the season doesn't seem to make too much sense when the No. 8 spot in the West is very much up for grabs.
None of that is up for dispute.
But what if the Thunder just don't need Durant in the lineup to find enough success for the time being? Once more, that's the key to all of the decision-making in Oklahoma City for the time being.
Why Delaying His Return Makes Sense
There's just one issue with the projection in the previous section.
FATS looks at season-long data, and it doesn't isolate the most relevant parts of the season when there's a major injury—or two, as it happens for the Thunder. So, let's adjust and look at what happens if we use the current win-loss record but only analyze the team's statistical profile since the two superstars have returned.
Isolating the portion of the season that has taken place since Westbrook returned to the lineup against the New York Knicks on Nov. 28, the Thunder are projected to win 51 games. But looking only at the nine contests in which Durant has played, OKC's projection goes back down a bit to 49-33.
Both those records should have the team in the postseason with room to spare, though the changes are significant in and of themselves. After all, they indicate that Durant's presence hasn't exactly aided the team all that much, as he's been playing with a minutes limit and is clearly a bit restricted while working himself back into playing shape.
In fact, since Durant went back down after his nine-game stint, FATS shows that the Thunder have still played like a 51-win team, with Westbrook leading the charge as both the alpha and the beta dog. And that's including the ugly performance against the Dallas Mavericks on Dec. 28, one in which the 1-guard shot only 6-of-23 from the field and turned the ball over five times.
Fatigue is certainly a concern if Durant is kept out for a significant amount of time, however. Westbrook is handling an inordinately high workload right now—his 41.1 usage rate is rather easily the highest mark in the NBA—but having him do so is the lesser of two evils.
Given the level he's playing at, even with that skyrocketing usage rate that you can see up above, it makes more sense for the Thunder to ride him until Durant is 100 percent ready to go. As the team proved last year, it can thrive while Durant is leading the charge, but risking another setback to the reigning MVP is far more dangerous than having Westbrook slow down.
Once more, the three primary arguments in favor of the Thunder rushing Durant back were as follows:
- They need Durant in the lineup to make the playoffs.
- They have to try to win now before there's a chance of him skipping town.
- Westbrook can't get too fatigued.
The third is the only real issue, but it's an unavoidable problem because the Thunder are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. They can either bring Durant back as quickly as possible and keep Westbrook fresh while risking injury to the small forward, or they can be cautious with Durant while the point guard has a chance to wear himself down.
Which is better?
Given my druthers, I'd rather ensure Durant's health as much as possible, even though Westbrook is playing at an MVP level in December. At the least, the complications make this less of an argument against the Thunder resting Durant and more of a overarching situation that's guaranteed to have potential problems down the road regardless of the organization's choice.
But neither of the other two bullet points are real issues.
Do the Thunder need Durant to make the playoffs? Not really, unless the Suns and/or Pelicans start playing at a much higher level. Forty-five wins may well be enough for a team to advance into the postseason in the Western Conference, and the Thunder are well ahead of that pace with Westbrook leading the charge.
And the remaining issue goes hand-in-hand with that one, as getting to the playoffs and keeping him healthy shows Durant just how invested the team is in him as an individual. This doesn't have to be viewed as coddling, just as a franchise making the most advantageous decision for its immediate and long-term future. Durant's eventual free-agency decision isn't going to be determined by his current team exercising a bit of necessary caution.
Of course, this leaning, one in favor of a slow and controlled return, can change.
If the Thunder start piling up losses and Westbrook makes significant strides in the negative direction, having Durant back on the floor becomes far more urgent. If the Suns and Pelicans click and make it seem as though we're looking at another No. 8 seed with 49 wins, it's time for him to throw caution to the wind.
But right now? None of that is necessary.
It might not seem like it on the surface level, but despite a sub-.500 record, in possession of a double-digit spot in the conference and even without the face of their franchise, the Thunder are actually in good shape.
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