In his heyday, Andre Roberson was possibly the best defender in the entire NBA. Clamping up the hottest offensive superstars, Roberson was a starter on a western conference finals team despite averaging a whole 4.8 points that season and infamously being incapable of hitting a jump shot.
Still, despite his limitations on the offensive end, he was an extremely valuable piece to the Oklahoma City Thunder. That is, until disaster struck and he literally disappeared from the league.
Many of you will be surprised if I showed you this footage of Andre in a Brooklyn Nets uniform from 2 seasons ago, and many are still wondering where he is and what happened to him?
The tragic downfall of Andre Roberson deserves a deeper look, and in this video, we’ll do just that. What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
The loss of James Harden opened up a gigantic hole at the shooting guard position for the Thunder that they desperately tried to cover.
Thabo Sefalosha, a defensive minded guy who could hit a few shots here and there, was the team’s first attempt. Then there was Kevin Martin with his quirky release, a nice shooter actually.
Derek Fisher at the tail end of his career also spent some time in OKC.
Needless to say, none of these players were the perfect piece that superstars like Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook needed for a championship.
This is how Roberson as well got a chance in 16 in the starting lineup as the 26th pick in the draft.
The Thunder were testing out players and although he started getting regular minutes towards the end of the season, for the playoffs they knew they needed the experienced guys to make a deep run. So Andre did not play any meaningful minutes in the postseason.
In his sophomore year however in 2014-15 he got much more playing time and started in 65 games. Unfortunately, this was mostly because of Kevin Durant’s injury that forced him to miss a large portion of the season, as well as some missed games by Westbrook.
Still, Roberson used the opportunity that was given to him to showcase his defensive potential and his overall willingness to do all the dirty work on the court.
Against Denver he would have a game with only 8 points but also 8 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks.
Or against Brooklyn when he scored only 4 points but dominated defensively with 2 steals and 4 blocks in just 21 minutes.
Despite barely missing out on the playoffs due to all those injuries, the Thunder sensed that they finally found the right starter to play along with Russ and KD.
One that would do all the screening, cutting, rebounding and especially defending the best player on the opposing team.
So that the 2 superstars can focus on what they do best- putting the ball in the basket.
And that’s exactly what happened in 2015-2016 as they both exploded.
Durant would get buckets on everyone and anyone. He was unguardable. Russ did everything and had 17 triple doubles that season, the beginning stages of the Westbrook supremacy that we know.
With all the attention on them, Andre Roberson had some of the easiest points of his career.
The Thunder would also run this action for him every single game. A misdirection pick and roll and with everyone focused on that, Andre cuts from the weak side for the alley oop dunk.
This was their bread and butter, as it offloaded the main guys, provided some points for a non shooter, and the fans absolutely loved it.
But that couldn’t mask the fact that Roberson struggled offensively.
As a career 25% three point shooter, that season he had some of the most wide open looks as everyone would double Russ and KD off of him. Even in this perfect scenario, he only slightly improved to 31%.
There were times when he would even pass up an open shot, so his teammates would get mad at him.
And the situation was even worse when it came to free throws.
Andre is a career 46.8% shooter from the foul line. An absolutely miserable percentage, that would mess with him so much that he would sometimes run around the court to avoid getting the hack a shaq treatment.
It was ugly watching his shooting woes.
But despite all of that, OKC still looked unstoppable that season. They got all the way to the brink of the finals and it took an iconic game, a superhuman effort from Klay Thompson in game 6, to deny them the chance to compete for a championship.
Shortly after, Durant infamously left and everything changed for this team.
This fully unlocked Russell Westbrook who went nuclear in that 2016-17 season and won the MVP. Seemingly it unlocked Andre Roberson as well, who played the best defense of his career and earned a spot on the second team all defense.
A lot of people think that there was a point where Roberson was up there with Kawhi Leonard as the best on ball defender in the league. But because of his quiet persona, he didn’t attract too much attention and didn’t get selected more often.
29 дек 2022
