Lebron James A Huge Factor in Durant's Foul Troubles - RaychelSnr's Blog

Arena Blog Dynasty Scores Sign Up ☰

RaychelSnr's Blog

Lebron James A Huge Factor in Durant's Foul Troubles Stuck

Posted on June 18, 2012 at 01:28 PM.

(23)

Kevin Durant could only just watch as the Miami Heat melted the OKC Thunder's 10 point advantage in the third quarter of game three of the 2012 NBA Finals.

With a long sleeve pullover on, Kevin Durant found himself sitting out another huge chunk of another huge game, shouldered by another bad spate of foul trouble.

It's sometimes been said the best defense is a good offense, but in the case of Kevin Durant perhaps the best defense against him is to have Lebron James play offense against him?

It was James, after all, who was racking up a double-double on his way to leading the Miami Heat to a 2-1 advantage in this the 2012 edition of the NBA Finals.

James' stat lines are impressive to be sure in these Finals: 30 points, nine rebounds and four assists in Game 1. 32 points, eight rebounds, and five assists in game 2. 29 points and 14 rebounds in Game 3.

But perhaps the most important stat for Lebron is that Kevin Durant has only played more than 40 minutes once in the NBA Finals and it's happened because of Lebron's offensive prowess and ability to draw foul calls on Durant.

Before this series, Durant had played less than 40 minutes in games decided by 10 points or less only once in these playoffs. In two of the first three games in these Finals, Durant has failed to cross the 40 minute barrier.

The question that has to be going around the Thunder camp is how to keep Durant on the floor. The thought process has been to have him guard James for significant chunks of the game, but that simply isn't working. Durant can't play in foul trouble again if OKC wants to win an NBA Championship -- but it also seems the Thunder can't sacrifice more than one matchup in order to keep their star on the court.

That's what Lebron James does to a team. That's why the Heat are up 2-1 and have OKC reeling and forced with a must win game four.

Game 4 is the deciding factor between OKC having to win three straight games to win an NBA Championship or the series going back to OKC at 3-2 in someone's favor.

But to win Game 4, the Thunder have to figure out how to keep James from dominating the game while also keeping Durant on the court. Those two tasks might be tough to do at the same time.

Durant's stat lines are still quite good considering he's missed huge chunks of the last two games (36, 32, and 25 points respectively). OKC made some adjustments in the fourth, putting a combination of defenders on James and putting Durant in the nether regions of the court, far away from committing another foul and being cast into the purgatory of the bench.

The answer for OKC will be to somehow find a way to use a combination of defenses to keep Durant both out of foul trouble but also to keep the pressure on James. The status quo from games two and three will have to ultimately (and obviously) change.

For Miami, they need to keep taking advantage of the Thunder's youthful mistakes and they need to find ways to get Durant matched up with James and to keep drawing fouls on OKC's superstar and getting to the foul line.

Without a doubt, game four promises to be all sorts of fun tomorrow night.

Who do you have winning and why?

Comments

# 16 CoRRuPTMiND93 @ Jun 19

*foul battier and James jones

# 17 kolanji @ Jun 19

heats will win....thunder cant hide their scorers too long from playing all out defense and saving their legs..... not so much westbroke but durant and harden....
working that hard on defense takes away some from their offensive game more so harden that is being posted up on most of the time by james..and trust me that takes a lot away from a scorer..thie was the tail of the tape game 1 and 3 for harden brooks try putting fisher on with harden to let fisher defend james = fail

# 18 TalenT @ Jun 19

@ Primrtime...In game 2 Durant shouldn't have even been in the game because in reality he fouled out when they called a block on Battier when it was CLEARLY a charge. Instead of OKC fans complaining about the refs I think they should try NOT falling behind 10-15 points in the first half.