This has been a talking point for me a couple of times in the past, and last night, the Thunder’s late game execution cost them another game.  This doesn’t mean the Thunder haven’t been successful late, but those successes came from quick hitters, and when Durant is used as a decoy.  However, the Thunder really seem to struggle (especially when coming out of timeouts) when they try to run sets to get Kevin Durant the ball.  That is what happened yet again last night:

In the above play, you can tell that Durant really wants the basketball.  He has what he thinks is a mismatch with Monta Ellis on him, and he wants to take advantage of it.  However, there is a ton of confusion for the Thunder on the offensive end here.  As Westbrook brings up the ball, there is a lot of standing around, and when the team finally gets into a set, they kind of just jog through the motions.  Jogging through sets isn’t really effective, because when you are jogging the opposition knows that you aren’t a threat.  When they know that, that is one less thing the defense needs to worry about (rewatch the video from an old post.  Durant sprints through his cut, forcing attention and freeing up Jeff Green).  Eventually the ball gets swung to Jeff Green, who to his credit tries to attack.  However, the poor spacing causes the ball to get stripped.

Here, the Thunder actually have a very nice play going.  They run Russell Westbrook off of a double screen and then send Durant off of the same.  He looks like he is going to be open for a catch and shoot, but he slips and that is what causes the turnover.

While the Thunder did have a nice play coming out of a timeout once before, it was under the basket (as was the second video which was a pretty nice play).  Where the Thunder really seem to struggle coming out of timeouts is at halfcourt, where they just can’t give Durant the basketball and let him shoot off of the catch.  It is tough to execute a catch and shoot at the halfcourt, because the defense is set and between the man and the basketball, allowing them to be in proper positions.

In the above video, it looks like the Thunder just want to quickly get it in to Harden and then run something off of that.  However, Harden breaks too early which is why he is covered initially.  By the time he frees himself up, Thabo Sefolosha is worried about a 5 second violation so he quickly triggers it in.  It is a bad pass, and goes off Harden’s foot, then  it is stolen.