Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan has been one of the main people feeling the absence of Andre Roberson, after he suffered a season-ending ruptured patella injury that put the team in a tough position.

Roberson was the team's key perimeter defender and one that excelled at it — averaging 1.2 steals and 0.9 blocks per game at the shooting guard/small forward position in a limited 26.6 minutes per game.

Donovan noted the Thunder, who have lost their last four games after racking up eight wins in a row, are in dire need of the defense he provided.

“I'm most concerned about that defensively, to be honest with you, is our 3-point defense,” said Donovan, according to Fred Katz of The Norman Transcript. “I'm really concerned about that, because you wanna protect the deep paint, and you don't wanna give up layups, but when the ball gets kicked back out, we have gotta have more urgency to run people off the line. And we're not running people off the line. We're closing out short, like we don't wanna get beat off the dribble, where we gotta run at the guy and make them bounce it inside the 3-point line.”

“And I think because of that, that, I think defensively for us, has been an area where we're doing a good job scrambling, but that's where Andre Roberson is great, maybe the best I've ever seen, of being able to close down on top of shooters and get them to bounce it and then also guard it.”

The Thunder have been getting killed from the perimeter and it is no surprise after having one of their best perimeter lock down guys on the shelf.

Roberson only contributed five points per game, but his acumen on defense was the reason he logged as many minutes as he has this season, engraining himself as an anchor of the Thunder's defensive strategy.