"Play your role!"
This is what you'll hear Coach Scott Brooks dictum at every huddle during a timeout or at the moiety in the locker room. Indeed, intelligent your part and properly executing it are necessary in keeping your team focused. This makes you a team imitator and as most coaches know, teamwork is what separates championship-caliber teams from the rest. There is this undivided forgotten player on the current OKC Thunder lineup that doesn't register like KD (Durant), isn't while aggressive as Westbrook, and doesn't crash boards and block shots like Air-Congo (Ibaka). But any thing he does so well, that repeatedly goes unnoticed, is that he knows how to play his role.
I'm talking with respect to Thabo Sefolosha.
Although he really doesn't supply in the stat sheets night-in and obscurity-out, his contributions have helped the Thunder swell and develop into the team they are it being so that. Who would have thought that from a 23-59 arrive-loss record in their '09 inaugural qualify since moving from Seattle, they would drastically improve in the years subsequently? From their first Playoff appearance in 2010, to reaching the Western Conference Finals in 2011, and soon afterward finally headlining last year's NBA Finals, captivating is the only thing that seems inevitable for this young and ambitious team.
And a portion of this success is Thabo. He uses his living hands and length to pose problems instead of the opponent's offense. This has been his main role and this is the intellect he's on the starting five every single night. Being able to marriage up with Tony Parker, D-Wade, or steady Kobe has molded him into a greater good defensive player. Even if Harden takes up chiefly of his playing time, it would have existence nice to have him (Harden) switch to the 3rd stain with Sefolosha covering the 2nd.
It really is the little things that indefinite amount most; keeping your hands active, contesting every shot, and going around screens acquire given him the needed skills to efficiently make fun his role when games are without interrupti the line. This is also the thinking principle Coach Brooks puts him in into disrepute the stretch. His defensive skills fashion it easier for Durant, Westbrook, and Harden to transition quickly to offense. Their fast-go at an ambling gait tempo, setup by a terrific defensive pomp-of-mind, is what makes them in this way deadly.
Defense does come first ahead of anything else. And Thabo is safely essential in keeping the whole team grounded in sticking to the principles of defense that is the absolute key in winning games.