Portland’s Allen Crabbe was feeling it. Anytime he touched the ball behind the three-point arc with any semblance of daylight, he was going to launch. A few too many times, Crabbe was given that space to fire off from deep.

As the Thunder reviewed last night’s shootout loss to the Blazers, some of those moments stood out: when players were cross-matched on an unlikely opponent or when a player’s tendencies weren’t taken into account when being guarded. During the course of a game, those issues are bound to happen. Pick-and-roll play is too precise to avoid any switches at all and when teams put different defenders on players like Russell Westbrook, sometimes it can be impossible to get matched up with the preferred opponent right away.

Thunder Minute: Coach Donovan

“Sometimes you’re coming out in transition and you don’t have a man necessarily. You’re matching up with the nearest man,” Head Coach Billy Donovan said. “We have to have a better awareness of not giving up threes.”

As a result, as the Thunder moves forward in this final stretch of the season, it will have to be sharper, quicker and simply better with the way it coordinates its defensive assignments throughout possessions.

“It’s just our communication, that’s our biggest thing. The bigs, we have to be up higher in pick and rolls and take more efficient routes to them,” Adams said. “It’s all the small things. It ain’t scouting at all, it’s our discipline to our defensive system overall.”

Thunder Minute: Steven Adams

During one portion of the game, a 2:38 stretch to end the first quarter, the Thunder was outscored 11-10, and the score in the quarter went from 30-18 to 40-29. It wasn’t that they were outscored by a point. At any stage of the game, that can happen. What was a problem was that Portland was able to rack up that many points in such a short amount of time, scoring possession after possession. While teams can certainly knock down a few shots in a row, it’s up to the Thunder to recognize when those hot shooting streaks are beginning, then snuffing them out before they become a game-long problem.

“Those stretches, it would be good if they didn’t happen, but that’s a part of the game. It’s going to happen anyway,” Adams explained. “The main thing is even though they got that stretch, now they’re hot and we can’t stop them. Our defense still has to put them out. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it plenty times over the year.”

Thunder Minute: March 9

- Victor Oladipo and Alex Abrines made it through the Portland game without incident, although Oladipo was on a 25-minute restriction. It remains to be seen whether that will still be the case on Thursday against San Antonio. Adams had to miss out on a few plays down the stretch against Portland after getting poked in the eye. On Wednesday at practice he showed no signs of being worse for the wear.

“It’s okay mate. It’s still there,” Adams quipped. “That’s always a positive.”

- In Tuesday night’s loss to Portland Adams only attempted one field goal, which is abnormal for the big Kiwi. Against a team like the Dallas Mavericks, it was to the Thunder’s benefit to have Adams post up a bunch on the block and go right at Dirk Nowitzki, and Adams had success doing that. When a team clogs up the lane to prevent rolls or has more formidable interior strength like Portland does, that makes Adams’ scoring chances harder. Still, Donovan wants his big man rolling hard to the rim after screens on nearly every play.

"When he rolls hard to the basket it opens up things for our entire team whether or not he gets the basketball," Donovan said.

- An aspect of the game that Adams and his fellow frontcourt mates have been effective with lately has been freeing up one another for post-ups. When the Thunder plays with two big men, and particularly with Adams and Enes Kanter on the floor together, they utilize one another to set cross screens in the lane. That screening action can create just enough separation for either Adams or Kanter to get to their spot on the block, get low and be ready to receive a pass before their defender completely recovers. Basketball is a game of inches, and if the Thunder’s bigs can catch it on the block a foot or two closer with a second or two more time, it can make a huge difference between a miss and a make.

“You just hit the dude who is guarding him as hard as you can,” Adams chuckled. “It just puts them in a tough situation like that, where a player has to go one-on-one. It’s a tough thing to be in, especially that low.”

Thunder Minute: Doug McDermott