Thunder Practice Report | Dec. 11, 2021
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00:00 During the Thunders 116-95 loss against the Los Angeles Lakers, they only shot 10 of 44 from behind the arc.
00:07 Yet, Coach Dagnalt still thinks that they took a lot of quality shots, they just weren't falling.
00:11 Here's another few things that led to the loss.
00:13 Our shot quality last night was actually pretty good.
00:16 We got a nice balance of shots, we were at the rim quite a bit.
00:20 A lot of our threes were open and catch and shoot threes, which we know yield the best results.
00:28 And there's a certain randomness to shooting that I think you have to be able to cut through in order to seek process-oriented improvement.
00:38 And so I thought that wasn't the problem last night.
00:42 I thought the problem last night was a combination of, they were really good.
00:46 They made us pay on a lot of plays.
00:50 You know, like almost every time they had an opportunity to capitalize on a mistake of ours, they did.
00:55 So you credit them.
00:57 And then I also thought we gave them a few too many opportunities to capitalize against us.
01:01 One rookie had himself a game last night.
01:03 Trey Mann gave his best performance to date, shooting 8 of 15 from the floor and finishing with 19 points.
01:09 Coach Dagnalt even joked, yeah, he can stop shooting now.
01:12 But Coach Dagnalt said that he was pleased with his performance and gave more of an insight to him being an aggressive offensive player.
01:18 When a guy goes out there and rips off 15 shots, obviously he's playing with a lot of confidence and aggressiveness right now.
01:24 I think it's important to think about it almost like inverted.
01:29 Like if you were going against the Thunder and Trey Mann was in the game, would you want him to be passive or would you want him to be aggressive?
01:37 And I think if you're the opponent, you're going to fear him more if he's ripping off 15 shots in the minutes that he played last night.
01:46 And you fear him more if he's coming off of those doubles and creating an open 3 off the dribble.
01:51 You fear him more if every single time he's open he shoots.
01:55 So if you're playing against Trey Mann, you'd rather him be passive. You'd rather him not take those shots.
02:01 And so I think looking at it from the perspective of the opponent sometimes is good, especially when you're talking about a player's aggressiveness.
02:07 Because it can be a little uneasy when it seems like he's squeezing a couple off.
02:11 But I think it's worth it for a player like him to establish that threat.
02:15 And the next time we play Dallas tomorrow, they have to account for him a little bit more.
02:21 And that opens up the offense and makes the game easier for everybody else.
02:24 And so I didn't have a problem with his aggressiveness last night.
02:30 I don't think he was doing it outside of the team. He was doing it inside of his skill set and inside of what we were trying to do.
02:36 And I was glad to see a couple of them fall and him have a nice night.
02:40 Although Trey Mann did have an incredible shooting night, that's not the part of his game that everyone's been talking about.
02:45 He pulled off his first dunk of the season and man, did he make it look effortless.
02:50 Jeremiah Robinson-Earl recounted his reaction to the dunk today.
02:54 I was sitting maybe halfway down the bench and I saw him split.
03:00 We don't know if he can get up and stuff, but he just flew.
03:05 I was just like, I went down on my knees. I was like, oh my God. That was crazy.
03:11 It just came out of nowhere, even though we know he can do it. But it was a great play.
03:14 The Thunder was able to snatch 19 offensive boards last night.
03:18 And when factoring their size disadvantage against the Lakers, that shows their assertiveness in getting second chance opportunities.
03:24 Coach Dagnall spoke more about that today.
03:26 Yeah, obviously a tough team to rebound against because their size.
03:32 We gave some up, especially in the first half early that cost us extra opportunities and opportunities to run.
03:39 But one of the things we've talked about in a couple of these games, the Golden State game on the road comes to mind.
03:45 Is when you're not making shots and you're not really finding shot making rhythm in the offense.
03:53 You got to try to manufacture by getting to the free throw line, getting on the offensive glass, finding a cut, getting something easy, getting on transition and running.
04:01 Obviously we didn't get to the line probably enough last night, but I thought on the glass we did a good job trying to manufacture some second opportunities.
04:09 Give ourselves multiple bites of the apple. So that's definitely been an emphasis, something we want to continue to do.
04:15 Oklahoma City will take on the Dallas Mavericks tomorrow, but for now, this has been your Thunder practice report.
04:20 Reporting for SI Thunder, I'm Christine Butterfield.
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