The Thunder Are Beating the Warriors at Their Own Game

This article is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NBA Playoffs coverage.

For most of the past NBA season, the Golden State Warriors have pushed the limits of what's possible on a basketball court. The defending champions leveraged positional versatility with prescient, pinpoint passing and ultra-precise shooting. They made free flowing, read-and-react basketball look both complex and effortless, and they steamrolled their way to an league-record 73 regular season wins. They even made team owner Joe Lacob's late-season triumphalism look…well, it still looked awfully cocky, but not necessarily wrong.

But after meeting every challenge that every opponent has thrown their way, the Warriors are down 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals, on the brink of postseason elimination at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder in tonight's Game 5, and facing an unexpected obstacle that they are ill-suited to overcome.

From top to bottom, the Thunder are probably the most athletic team in the NBA. They have speed at every position—enough to contain Golden State's All-Star backcourt—and their frontcourt duo of Serge Ibaka and Steven Adams has overwhelmed and overpowered the Warriors' frontcourt by combining that speed with size, length, and strength. Even when Golden State has deployed its previously unguardable Death Lineup, which sticks basketball shape-shifter Draymond Green at center, Oklahoma City has been able to match by sliding Kevin Durant to power forward and playing either Ibaka or Adams at center.

The Thunder's length is equally overwhelming. The Warriors' offense thrives on constant motion, hitting cutters in stride through split-second windows of opportunity. The Thunder have erased those angles with their length and athleticism, keeping their hands in every passing lane. Mostly celebrated for his scoring, Durant has been especially impressive on defense, smothering Green on every post touch and making him second-guess every drop-off pass to an open cutter.

As a result, the Thunder are playing their best defense of the season. In their three wins in the series, Oklahoma City has held the Warriors to a 94.9 ORTG—a mark that would've ranked dead last in the league during the regular season, and nearly 20 points per 100 possessions worse than Golden State's regular season mark.

The Thunder also are limiting the Warriors' fast break opportunities. During the regular season, Golden State thrived off of points in transition and on possessions following a defensive rebound, beating opponents down the floor and exploiting mismatches against scrambled defenses for quick, easy scores. This forced most of the Warriors' opponents to choose between attacking the offensive glass, or dropping back to stymie the break.

Oklahoma City is unique in its ability to choose option c), and do both. When a shot goes up, the Thunder keep two or three guys back, but can still grab offensive rebounds with Adams and Russell Westbrook, probably the best guard in the league at crashing the glass from the perimeter. Together, they form a two-man wrecking crew that helped produce the most second chance points in the NBA during the regular season; against Golden State, Oklahoma City has scored 15.5 second chance points per game while holding the Warriors to 15.5 fast break points.

In short, the Thunder's offensive rebounding has negated the Warriors' transition advantage. And having to account for Westbrook after every OKC shot attempt can't be fun for league MVP Steph Curry, either.

Of course, it's not just fast break points that matter. Golden State has been great for two seasons at scoring off defensive rebounds. Missed shots don't always lead to fast breaks, but they often lead to possessions against an opposing defense that hasn't had a chance to get set and catch its breath. As a whole, NBA teams scored five points per 100 possessions more following defensive rebounds than they did following made baskets. By forcing the Warriors to send all five player to clean up the defensive glass, the Thunder have taken the preceding scenario away from the Warriors, forcing them to go against a set half-court defense far more frequently than they'd like.

Oklahoma City has also given Golden State a taste of its own medicine, wreaking havoc in transition. The Thunder were a great transition team all year, but their 19.5 fast break points per game in the series is high, even by their standards. Swarming defense and overwhelming athleticism has allowed Oklahoma City to play faster than usual. Take a look:

In the half court, Oklahoma City has enjoyed elevated performances from its two most important role players, Adams and Andre Roberson. A terrific defender, Roberson can be an offensive liability, mostly because his regular-season 31 percent three-point shooting allowed opponents to leave him virtually unguarded. In this series, however, Roberson has made Golden State pay by knocking down 2.5 threes per game on 54.5 percent shooting, as well as attacking the basket off of well-timed cuts.

Meanwhile, Adams' value seems to increase with every game. He's a very crafty screener, with a nose for catching on-ball defenders off-guard with surprise screens in the back. In this clip, notice how Adams casually jogs down court before making a sudden beeline for Harrison Barnes, pinning him several feet above the three-point line. With Adams' defender well out of position to show on the screen, Durant is able to attack downhill, moving toward his sweet spot at the free throw line. Not every big man can make that sort of screen—not without fouling, or telegraphing when and where the screen is coming from. But Adams makes these types of plays on nearly every possession, exhausting opposing defenders who have to fight around him and recover.

While Oklahoma City has controlled the series by doing a lot of things right, Golden State also has done some things wrong: lapses in focus, sloppy execution, and what at times looks like a surprising lack of effort. For example, as great as the Thunder are at crashing the offensive glass, many of their second chances have come in one-on-five situations favoring the Warriors.

Last season, Golden State had the top DRTG in the league. This season, the Warriors slid to No. 6, but were still able to lock down opponents on the rare occasions that their offense wasn't humming. Against the Thunder, that hasn't been the case, with their defense looking either lazy or confused.

Part of that confusion may stem from placing Green, an excellent on-ball defender, on Roberson, Oklahoma City's least-threatening offensive player. In theory, this tactic allows Green to roam the paint and provide help on star scorers like Durant and Westbrook; in practice, it hasn't worked. The Warriors have gotten mixed up on their rotations, bumping into Green in the paint, leaving shooters wide open and surrendering easy offensive rebounds.

Offensively, Golden State has continued to produce possessions with great ball movement and clever motion, reminding us how they won 73 games in the first place. Yet for every one of those moments, there has been a half-dozen awful passes or forced shots—enough miscues to wonder if Warriors would be better served by slowing down. That would be antithetical to the way they've dominated the NBA, but the Thunder might be the one team that is better at playing fast than Golden State. Indeed, the more patient the Warriors were on offense in Games 3 and 4, the more they found their patented back door cuts and wide open kickouts.

As is often the case when a team struggles unexpectedly, Golden State has missed a lot of shots that they usually make. Entering Game 5, Curry is just 3-for-11 on what SportVu tracking cameras define as "wide open" three-point attempts—that is, shots when the nearest defender is farther than six feet away from the shooter. Given that he's chasing around Westbrook on defense, fighting through a lot of off-ball contact on offense, and recently returned from a knee injury, it's possible that Curry is fatigued—and that his tired legs are affecting his long-range shooting. On the other hand, Curry is so good that it's hard to imagine he won't find his stroke, something the Warriors desperately need.

Golden State has spent the last two seasons breaking records, and they've changed the face of professional basketball along the way. But winning three straight games against Oklahoma City—a uniquely challenging opponent—is a very tall task. At the very least, the stage is set for a historic team to accomplish one more historic thing. But against a Thunder team that's playing this well, even the Warriors' best effort may not be enough.