OKLAHOMA CITY -- The alarm was ringing out, with a bright light flashing every second or two as a voice echoed through the hallway.
"Please leave the building immediately."
Billy Donovan was unfazed. And by unfazed, he didn't pause for even a moment to acknowledge the ridiculously loud sound or break eye contact with a reporter while answering a question following a preseason game in Tulsa. Apparently a little smoke in the kitchen set off the fire alarm in the arena. Talking through the blaring noise, Donovan continued on unmoved, until finally a Thunder PR representative halted the interview.
Throughout all of training camp, Donovan has been mildly prodded about the future of the franchise, and he's stuck to a very standard, focused response. It's all about the now, worrying about today, about getting his team better. Alarms are ringing in Oklahoma City with noise of Kevin Durant's looming free agency dictating the narrative surrounding the Thunder this season.
A new coach, with no NBA coaching experience brought in for the Thunder's most important season ever, thrown into a cauldron of speculation, rumors and expectations.
Donovan can't hear any of that. He's too consumed with the present task, which is getting the very best out the loaded roster he's coaching, which more specifically means getting the very best out Durant and Russell Westbrook. So how's he going to do that?
New-look Thunder?
Ask Donovan about installing a whole new offensive system with the Thunder, and he's quick to correct you.
"For me, it's not so much a whole new offensive system as much as it's concepts," he said. "Putting these guys in concepts. Trying to help them move the floor so they can make plays and have space to play in. But I don't think the concepts those guys are playing in are foreign to them, or they've never seen them before. I just think my job as a coach is to try and help them move the floor."
Movement. Spacing. Passing. Those are the unicorns of the Thunder offense, empty words that have been bandied about the past few seasons by players and coaches when reality told a much different story. There were times the Thunder moved the basketball, and there's no question they evolved from the 2011-12 team that finished dead last in assists per game (yet also went to the Finals). But in an effort to stimulate growth and development, particularly for the franchise's two magnetized stars, general manager Sam Presti fired coach Scott Brooks and appointed Donovan.
"New system, new coach," Durant said. "Feels like a new era of basketball."
The natural curiosity for everyone who walks through the doors of the facility is how things have changed. More to the point: What does Donovan do differently than Brooks? It's an awkward question to ask, and one players don't especially like answering. Durant's been asked more than most, and most times he says he's not doing comparisons. But once early in camp, he indulged.
"He's running more sets, I think," Durant said of Donovan's offense compared to Brooks'. "He's put in different packages for guys at different positions. Scotty did a great job of moving the floor and allowing his iso players to make plays, and I think Billy is doing that, too, but it's a little bit different. We're moving around a little bit more, moving from side-to-side a little bit more.
"New system, new coach. Feels like a new era of basketball." Kevin Durant
"In Scotty's defense, though, as players, we should have done a better job of producing ourselves -- moving the ball, moving our bodies. [Now], we just get more conscious of it every day, and it's preached to us every day."
Durant is forever the high-class diplomat and would never throw his former coach under the bus, even unintentionally. Everyone is careful to avoid comparing directly, because it's hard not to take every positive statement about the Thunder's current offense as an indictment of the former.
The team experienced incredible success under Brooks, including some high-functioning, highly efficient offensive teams, but the transition was made because the team wants to change, to grow, to evolve. So something better be different.
"I think and feel like my job as a coach is to move the floor for those guys in actions and things that we're doing to help and create some space for them to play in," Donovan said. "I've always been a ball-movement, player-movement coach, where we want to extra pass, want to move the basketball. That said, we also have two of the best one-on-one offensive players in the NBA, so there's a balance on getting them the ball where they can play in some isolations, whether that's in post-ups or on the elbow.
"I don't think it's anything where someone's going to watch something and say, 'Geez, this has never been done before in the NBA.' I don't feel that way at all. All I'm trying to do is trying to create opportunities for those guys to play in space and to be who they are and put them in positions to make some decisions and reads."
Move the floor
One of the most enduring criticisms of Brooks' offenses was the penchant for isolation and stagnation, an over-reliance on two other-worldly stars to routinely make something out of nothing, especially late in games. But that's the tightrope Donovan has to walk: embracing the strengths of his roster, particularly Durant and Westbrook, who are tremendous isolation players, while also helping them and the rest of the roster evolve.
Donovan already has coined a phrase to describe what he wants to instill: "move the floor." It's a conceptual thing, something abstract but has a direct meaning for the players on the court, and he's used it incessantly.
"It just means spacing and putting guys in the right positions to score the basketball," Westbrook said. "As players we've got to make basketball reads. With spacing and with the play-calling and different things we have, it puts everybody in position to be able to score. It puts our offense in a position to get easy shots and moving the basketball, it's hard to guard us that way."
"All I'm trying to do is trying to create opportunities for those guys to play in space and to be who they are and put them in positions to make some decisions and reads." Billy Donovan
The 50-year-old Donovan isn't completely reinventing the Thunder. He's refining it. It's the finer points, the small gains, the gentle tweaking he has focused on. Donovan calls that "bringing value."
What he really means is: How can I make things easier for these two guys?
"I think the guys have loved Billy's offense," said veteran forward Steve Novak, "because he puts a lot of the responsibility and trust in the players. It's not like we pass to A, then B happens, then C happens. He puts us in situations where he allows the guys to play and make plays. So as basketball players we love that, and it's also a lot of responsibility for us because we have to make the right decisions and be unselfish."
Donovan wants his players to read and react. He resists the idea of calling an organized set that has predetermined actions because he feels that makes a team easy to scout. He likes improvisation and spontaneity, which, lucky for him, Westbrook and Durant are really good at.
At the same time, that sounds an awful lot like how the Thunder functioned under Brooks. They were too straightforward and not hard to solve. It often essentially was reduced to something as simple as, Did Westbrook and Durant play well enough? Donovan gets this offensive paradox, which is why he wants to support their strengths while still maturing their games to a more profound place.
"I wouldn't call it doing less," Durant said of the offense. "I would say, before myself and Russell, we would always feel like we'd have to make every play. But now, getting off the ball, letting it come back to us and then making plays on the backside, just exhausting the defense a little more than we have before. But I wouldn't say we're doing less, though. We still have to be the players we are. We can't shy away from what we've been doing. We are two of the best iso players in the league, but we also have to know we have to make plays for everybody else."
Walking the tightrope
Donovan's tightrope is finding the balance between letting Durant and Westbrook play with freedom and clarity, while maintaining a level of structure and organization. This was a major issue with Brooks, who always was a players' coach, letting the leash grow longer and longer, especially for his stars.
One thing about Durant: He actively wants to be coached. Durant didn't advocate for Brooks' replacement, but he certainly was open to the idea of change. Like so many others within the organization, there was a fear of plateauing and losing the edge and energy that has stimulated the franchise since relocating in 2008. There has always been a freshness about the Thunder. But that finally started to stale last season, so Durant welcomed a new voice and has been extremely supportive of Donovan.
"[Coach Donovan] will stop practice and let us know what we need to do, how we need to get better with the standard he's trying to hold us to," Durant said. "He's holding Russell and myself accountable for everything as leaders, and that's what we need."
Westbrook, though, seems to be a tad more guarded about it. Brooks was always Westbrook's top champion, going out of his way to defend his polarizing point guard at every turn, while simultaneously extending the longest of leashes to allow Westbrook to be Westbrook to the greatest extent, sometimes to a fault.
Donovan has spent almost the entire month of October lauding Westbrook's basketball intelligence and leadership skills. Westbrook, though, hasn't gone overboard in returning the adulation. When asked after the first week of camp how the new offense was translating, Westbrook was short and to the point.
"So far so good," he said. Not exactly a raving early endorsement.
"[Coach Donovan and I] never had a problem from the get-go. I can tell you don't believe everything you hear." Russell Westbrook
You have to understand, though, that's just Westbrook. There's nothing deep to read into, no bread crumbs of distrust or dysfunction to pick up on. Westbrook's tunnel-like focus is on basketball and winning, and the coach is only part of the entire mechanism. Though some might doubt it, Westbrook can be coached and is embracing Donovan's conceptual tweaks, but in the end, he plays his own way, unapologetically so.
Westbrook did not question Donovan's hire, nor was he resistant to change. But many around the league did wonder how the relationship was going to play out. Asked recently about the national narrative in how he'll get along with Donovan, in classic Westbrook fashion, he made rare eye contact with the question-asker, snarled his face and pushed back at the question.
"Who made that up?" Westbrook said. "We never had a problem from the get-go. I can tell you don't believe everything you hear."
Durant can fit in any offense, in any way you want. He's one of the most beautifully versatile offensive players the game has ever seen, and no matter the lineup combination or structure he's playing in, he's going to score. It's just his nature. Westbrook, though, is an overwhelming force of personality, perpetually amped to oblivion, and that strong-headedness can be a blessing and a curse.
"I think we're, how do they say it, different animal, same beast, I guess?" Durant said. "I told a few guys this over the summer, Russell is one of those guys that'll come into your house and take all your stuff but turn all your lights on and let you know he's taking it. I'm one of those guys that will come in while you're sleeping and take your stuff and leave. We get the same things accomplished but different ways."
The Thunder will be a top-10 offensive team regardless of what they run, assuming good health smiles upon them for a season. They'll win a lot of games, no matter how they play. They have two of the six best players in the world on the same team. It might really be that simple.
Still, Donovan's aim is to make the offense more inclusive, more versatile, more precise, more diverse and more effortless. The Thunder are going to be patient, realizing November and December are the breeding grounds for a stronger team in April and, potentially, May and June.
"Truth be told, we've got better players [than in past seasons]," Durant said. "We've got a deep team. When you have a deep team, everybody is going to get open shots and it'll take pressure off your guys. ... Having the best players on the floor, it helps everybody out. We can talk about the offense ... of course it's gotten better. We're moving the ball better, things like that, but when you have good players, it helps out."
Like No. 35 and No. 0. Maybe it is just that simple.
