What will the Oklahoma City Thunder do next with Chet Holmgren out?

You don’t do that replace a player like Chet Holmgren, actually. The game-changing big man has proven to be such a perfect fit for the Thunder, checking so many boxes in one tidy 7-foot-1 package – as a floor-spacing 3-point shooter, as an elite rim protector, as a complementary face-up and off-the- bounce scoring threat, like the missing cog that really makes Mark Daigneault’s five-out attacking plan sing, etc. – that there aren’t many like-for-like replacements available if he’s not T. (It’s not like you’re thinking of Kristaps Porziņģis, Myles Turner or Jay Huff off the scrap heap, you know?)

So after Holmgren hit the deck hard Sunday night after contesting an Andrew Wiggins drive and had to be helped off the field with what was later diagnosed as a broken hip, everyone knew that a Thunder team that was headed to the top of the West risen behind a historically elite defense held back by its ascendant center would have to find another way to win. And with the two from Oklahoma City other bona fide bigs – offseason signing of Isaiah Hartenstein and third-year pro Jaylin Williams – Also will be on the shelf for at least the next few weeks, simply “throwing in another tall man” is not an option.

Including another little(r) man is.

Without the league’s No. 2 shot blocker lurking to clean up the mess at the basket, Daigneault leaned into Oklahoma City’s esteemed wing depth against the Clippers on Monday. The Thunder have spent a lot of time playing small and or thin up front in recent seasons — miss you, Poku — so switching back, as Daigneault and Gilgeous-Alexander both noted Monday, isn’t as new or shocking as it might be for others teams are. So Oklahoma City started small and stayed small, with its field lineups almost entirely devoid of players taller than 6 feet. (We see you, Ousmane Dieng.) The bet: An armada of knife-handed maniacs on the perimeter could disrupt LA’s offensive flow enough with active hands, early rotations and opportunistic traps to win the possession battle.

The approach paid off from the opening tip… which was jumped by Jalen Williams, all 6 feet tall, who continued his journey up the positional mountain: point guard at Santa Clara, shooting guard as a rookie, power forward in his breakout sophomore campaign, backup center behind Holmgren to start the season, and now, starting at 5. (“That’s why I gained weight,” he recently joked to The Ringer’s Zach Kram.)

Head coach Tyronn Lue understandably tried to take the Clippers’ size advantage out of the rip by calling a straight post-up for Ivica Zubac, a 7-foot, 240-pound center. And Williams, clearly expecting this, combined anticipation with a 7-foot-2 wingspan to leap into play, cut a hand for Zubac, bat away the entry pass and create a turnover that put Oklahoma City on initiated. .

This was what you might call ‘setting a tone’.

Oklahoma City had already forced plenty of turnovers before Holmgren’s injury. In fact, according to Cleaning the Glass, prior to Sunday’s loss to the Warriors, the Thunder had sought 19.1% of their opponents’ offensive possessions outside of garbage time. Not only is that a dramatic increase from the 15.7% they led the NBA with last season; it would be the highest opponent turnover rate in the 22 campaigns for which Cleaning the Glass has data. (No team has ever topped 18% since 2014-15, when Jason Kidd drafted an extremely high-pressure defense to exploit the length of his young Bucks, led by a precocious Giannis Antetokounmpo.)

The Thunder turned that disruption up a notch on Monday. With Williams, the 6-foot-1 Alex Caruso and Dillon Jones, the just-returned 6-foot-1 Kenrich Williams and the comparative giant Dieng (who goes 6-foot-1, but at a paltry 216 pounds) taking turns at center – and with off-ball threats like Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins waiting to strike at every opportunity – Oklahoma City racked up 16 steals and 27 deflections, forcing turnovers on an eye-popping 24% of LA’s offensive possessions in a 134-128 win.

The pressure-burst-pipes approach is essentially an extension of standard operating procedure for Oklahoma City, which leads the NBA in steals, blocks And deflections per play. (The last team to do that for a full season? The 2016-17 Warriors, who added Kevin Durant to the core of a 73-win behemoth and promptly became one of the greatest teams of all time.) It’s also a natural outgrowth of continuing to lean into the chaos created by Caruso, who is averaging 3.2 steals, 1.2 blocks and 7.4 deflections per 36 minutes of floor time, all being wheeled around the court like a caffeinated cartoon shot out of a cannon:

(On a side note: Caruso’s most common defensive matchups are hilarious – Zubac, the 6-foot-4 Michael Porter Jr., Deandre Ayton, Nikola Jokić, Goga Bitadze, Jonathan Kuminga, Alperen Şengün, Draymond Green…oh, and also Jamal Murray, Trae Young and Russell Westbrook. Who else do you want to annoy, frustrate and disrupt?

The choice to increase the pressure even further without Holmgren resulted in even more turnover. Breaking up that Clipper possession and turning it into an early offense — OKC scored 1.56 points per game in transition and finished with a 16-10 edge in fast-break points — helped the Thunder go on an early 11-1 run to take control and build an advantage. lead that increased to 20 points halfway through the third.

“Just going full throttle a little bit. If it doesn’t work, obviously we can adjust it,” said Jalen Williams, who finished with 28 points, eight rebounds, six assists and two steals in 35 minutes of work. struggling against the significantly larger Zubac (Daigneault praised his new starting center after the game: “He has a chance to be a great player. Maybe he already is one. What makes him great is how good his game really is.” nothing on the basketball court he can’t do.)

“That’s what we’re doing tonight,” Williams added. “See what works, see what doesn’t work and go from there.”

What worked: sending double and sometimes triple teams on post-ups from different angles; dialing in hard traps in the pick-and-roll to get the ball out of James Harden’s hands; having both low men ready to swarm as the ball enters the paint to try to get a strip, a block or a tie-up, thus preventing a shot from getting up in the first place.

When that not work, but the lack of scope becomes very, very clear:

After a quiet first half in which Zubac had more turnovers (four) than buckets (two), the Clippers did a better job of getting him in areas where he could stay away from OKC’s smaller defenders, allowing him to catch and finish . without bringing the ball down near sweeping hands. And as committed as the Thunder’s wings were to getting back into the fold, getting bodies on Zubac early to lock him out and trying to tip missed shots clear to teammates, the Clippers did grab 15 offensive rebounds, leading to 21 points – a whopping 40.5% offensive rebound rate that, unsurprisingly, is the highest mark Oklahoma City has allowed this season.

These paint points and extra possessions, combined with a hellish second half from scorching Clipper wing Norman Powell, cut OKC’s lead to one possession several times in the fourth quarter – underscoring just how difficult and demanding it really is to spend $100 to give. -plus possessions during 48 minutes of fighting a weight class.

However, the Thunder were able to survive, largely thanks to the other The key to the “go small, win big” plan: When Oklahoma City spreads the floor and opens things up, it gives Gilgeous-Alexander all the room he needs to drop a building on your head.

Sunday’s loss and Monday’s win were Oklahoma City’s two worst defensive games of the season so far, despite all the forced turnovers. It doesn’t seem sustainable to have to score 1.3 points per possession to get a beeper, just as it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect 45 points on 21 shots, four three-pointers, fifteen free throws, and nine assists on just one turnover . turnover of SGA.

On the other hand, the two-time All-NBA First Team selection and reigning MVP runner-up certainly seems to expect it of himself…

…so maybe we shouldn’t sell him short. Or the rest of those Dobermans, determined to win the possession game, and with it the game, in any way.

“I think they’re confident that they’re very competitive,” Daigneault said after the game. “They want to win. And they are strongly connected. So they’re going to do what it takes to win, and they’re going to do it together.”

In the post-game interview, NBA TV’s Dennis Scott questioned the shelf life of this little look — one that may not necessarily survive Holmgren’s reevaluation in mid-January, but will have to function like Oklahoma City’s. fastball And change until at least Hartenstein is cleared to make his debut. Realistically, Scott asked, how long can you play this way?

Gilgeous-Alexander registered the last deflection of the night’s thunder and batted away the question with the only answer there is: “However long it takes us.”