Serge Ibaka on State of the Oklahoma City Thunder

December 30th, 2015 by Josh Martin Leave a reply »

If you were to choose one member of the Oklahoma City Thunder to swat away a potential game-winner, it would be Serge Ibaka.

"He’s just one of those guys that has a knack for it," Kevin Durant said in praise of his longtime teammate. "Just like he can’t put the ball in the basket like me, I can’t block shots nowhere near as good as he can."

Nowadays, there's much more to Ibaka's game than just rim protection. On the other end of the floor, he's molded himself into one of the league's sharpest mid-range shooters and a legitimate threat from deep.

A career 37.3 percent three-point shooter, Ibaka knocked down 38 percent of his long-range looks through his first 32 games. But with Durant and Russell Westbrook back and healthy, his attempts from beyond the arc have been sliced in half, from 3.2 in 2014-15 to 1.6 in 2015-16.

"Looking at the stats last year, he probably was three-point heavy and didn’t really take a lot of twos," Thunder head coach Billy Donovan explained. "I think he’s maybe a little two-point heavy now. You’re always trying to find that balance. But his three-poin ...

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