to take a 2-0 series lead<\/a>, this much was clear: it worked to perfection.<\/p>\nDurant tied his career playoff high with nine turnovers. Just three of his 23 points came in a second half in which the Rockets were outscored by four. And Houston \u2014 which had the league\u2019s 14th-best offensive rating during the regular season \u2014 shot just 40.1 percent from the field while missing 22 of 29 3s and failed to reach triple digits for the second time in this series.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, they\u2019re switching our\u00a0pick-and-rolls, and then once they switch they\u2019re just doubling off of me,\u201d said Durant, who also had six rebounds, four assists and a minus-2 mark. \u201cSo it\u2019s hard to get into our actions. We\u2019re used to teams playing pick-and-roll, or maybe trapping me or playing in the drop. But they\u2019re switching, and then just running a guy at me at the half (court line) or at the 3-point (line), or wherever I\u2019m at, to double.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve played this team before, and they know this is the way for them to stay in the game, is to play this type of defense. We\u2019ve got to make them pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Tuesday night\u2019s end, with the Rockets\u2019 offense floundering even worse than it had without Durant in Game 1, the effectiveness of the strategy served as a brutal reminder that Houston\u2019s title-contending plan might have fallen apart seven months ago.<\/p>\n
In late September \u2014 less than three months after the Rockets traded for Durant from the Phoenix Suns \u2014 veteran point guard Fred VanVleet tore his ACL, and questions were immediately raised about how the offensive duties would be doled out. The 32-year-old VanVleet had signed a two-year, $50 million deal just one week after the Durant deal was done. VanVleet and Durant, along with big man Steven Adams before his season-ending ankle surgery in late January, were supposed to be the veteran leaders on a top-tier team.<\/p>\n
None of the proposed solutions to VanVleet\u2019s absence has actually panned out. Amen Thompson, the third-year talent who was forced into a playmaking position, has not shown he can consistently pick up that slack. Reed Sheppard, the sharpshooting second-year guard who had seemed to earn some level of trust from coach Ime Udoka, played just 11 minutes (while missing all four of his shots) in the Rockets\u2019 most important game of the season. Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn, the fifth-year big man who is a willing and talented passer, has struggled mightily to mesh with Durant and be at his best within this new Rockets construct.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely need to be aggressive when I get the ball in the middle,\u201d said \u015eeng\u00fcn, the All-Star center who had 20 points (nine of 20 shooting), 11 rebounds, five assists and just one of the Rockets\u2019 15 turnovers. \u201cMissing so many shots, so I need to get back to who I am and dominate the paint when I get the ball and help KD a little bit and make my teammates better for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
In hindsight, perhaps too much was made of the late-season stretch in which the Rockets won nine of their last 10 games. It was seen by some as a strong sign that they\u2019d finally found their way, with Houston registering the league\u2019s second-best offensive rating during that span and Durant (6.9 assists per) leading the way on the facilitating front. But six of those wins came against teams that didn\u2019t make the playoffs, including games against known tankers in the Memphis Grizzlies (twice), Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans.<\/p>\n
LeBron James and the Lakers, meanwhile, are officially flirting with the notion of doing something truly special. The loss of Don\u010di\u0107 and Reaves was supposed to decimate their hopes of advancing, but their backup backcourt of Marcus Smart and Luke Kennard was spectacular in Game 2.<\/p>\n
Smart had 25 points, including five 3s, with seven assists. Kennard had 23 points, following his 27-point outing in Game 1. Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka deserves a hat tip for landing them in the last year. (Smart was signed in free agency last summer, while Kennard came via trade from the Atlanta Hawks in February.) If the Lakers can survive until the second round, then the chance remains that Reaves and Don\u010di\u0107 (in that order) could eventually return.<\/p>\n
Truth be told, though, James (28 points, eight rebounds, seven assists) is reminding us all that he\u2019s pretty good at running point too. At 41 years young, he managed to navigate his fair share of double teams en route to dominating in a way that no one his age ever has. In that sense, this was the inverse experience of when James and Durant last met on the postseason floor.<\/p>\n
The 2018 NBA Finals featured a loaded Golden State Warriors squad that swept James\u2019 Cleveland Cavaliers, back when the idea of doubling Durant regularly was foolish because of all the firepower and facilitating that surrounded him. Times have changed for Durant, though, and not for the better.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what play is called, no matter what action is called, or what side of the floor, they\u2019re gonna double-team, you know what I\u2019m saying?\u201d Durant said. \u201cNo matter if I catch it at the elbow or the block. So if a team doesn\u2019t mind double-teaming at half court, you don\u2019t think they\u2019re not gonna double-team everywhere else on the floor too?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo \u2026 when I see those doubles, because they\u2019re gonna come and guard me, and be aggressive, go to try to shoot over some of them, make the correct pass. But, yeah, I\u2019m not expecting them to not double me in certain areas of the floor. Regardless of where I get it at, I feel like it\u2019s going to be two to three people on me. I\u2019ve just got to be smarter and make the correct play. And then we got to make shots out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If it only it were that easy. As these first two games have revealed, it most certainly is not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Kevin Durant hates double teams. That might sound like an obvious statement \u2014 and in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,194,150,6,11],"class_list":{"0":"post-715840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston-rockets","10":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116448335241967020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}