Spurs’ Streak Continues With Game 2 Win Over Thunder

Even the Thunder experts at Welcome to Loud City have thrown in the towel and are waiving the Yellow Flag:

Making things even more bizarro, to counter the Spurs speed the Thunder pulled out an old Spurs trick: Hack-a-Whoever Can’t Make Free Throws. It kind of worked, too.

The alternative is to look at where the Thunder could do things differently, however, as they try to avoid being swept out of a chance to reach the NBA’s championship series. In that case, SB Nation’s own Welcome To Loud City has some ideas of what Oklahoma City could have done to change its fortune on Tuesday night.

For more on the Spurs, be sure to visit Pounding the Rock; for the Thunder, Welcome to Loud City. And for news, analysis and everything else revolving around the NBA Playoffs, be sure to visit SB Nation’s NBA page.

Now that Parker has reasserted himself as one of the top point guards in the NBA once again this season with a near-flawless performance in Game 2, he has a lot of people talking about him. The best story to emerge has come from Yahoo! Sports’ Johnny Ludden.

It’s easy to take these Spurs for granted. Don’t.

Does Brooks envision his team trailing by 10-plus points again? It’s certainly not an opportunity he should relish for the Thunder.

It worked? Really? What game were they watching?

When the Thunder began fouling with two and a half minutes remaining in the third, the Spurs were ahead by 16 points. For the next five possessions, the Thunder intentionally fouled Splitter, who made five of his 10 free throws. At the end of those five possessions, the Spurs led by 16. At the end of the third quarter, the Spurs led by 16. One might have thought that in order for a strategy to be deemed a success, it might actually need to produce some measurable benefit on the court, perhaps reduce the deficit some -- but evidently not.

The Spurs take a 20-game winning streak to Oklahoma City on Thursday for Game 3.

The job is done, and therefore, it’s time for Manu Ginobili to blow off some steam.

On second thought, Manu, maybe keep some of that steam inside you.

Sometimes, it takes even a great team a little while to figure out a new look their opponent may be throwing at them. That appears to be what has happened in this fourth quarter. The Thunder did well to confuse the Spurs with a more athletic lineup, but it looks like the Spurs have gone back to being themselves instead of trying to change their offense just to beat the Thunder’s unique lineup.

Basically, more Tony Parker (15-20 from the field) and maybe a little less Tim Duncan.

He’s shooting 1-9 and providing typically bad defense. His intangibles must be off the charts.

While the Thunder are indeed occasionally switching pick and rolls on defense (and I stress “occasionally”), the bigger adjustment is that Serge Ibaka is actually in the game as the team’s center instead of Kendrick Perkins. A far cry from Game 1 indeed.

Here’s an adjustment by Scott Brooks: the Thunder are starting to switch on pick and rolls instead of hedging and recovering. I’d rather they just went under the screens and lived with a barrage of open jumpers, but this is something worth trying too.

The craziest thing about this game is that the Thunder are down just 10 points. Why? Their two guards, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, have found ways to get into the lane now that the Thunder have flattened the floor.

This is the Spurs’ Achilles heel — as good as they are offensively, their defense can sometimes come and go. It’s nitpicking like crazy, but it may affect them at some point down the line.

Look, we don’t know either.

This was after Scott Brooks deployed Hack-a-Splitter (didn’t work). Maybe it’s a sign of desperation. Maybe Ibaka is looking to jinx Tim Duncan. Maybe ... hell, I don’t know anymore.

For more on the Spurs, be sure to visit Pounding the Rock; for the Thunder, Welcome to Loud City. And, if you’re looking for news, analysis and everything else revolving around the NBA Playoffs, be sure to visit SB Nation’s NBA page.

The Thunder have resorted to intentionally fouling Tiago Splitter, and Splitter is well aware of this. That probably explains why he tried to run away from Kevin Durant here.

Splat-a-Splitter? Sack-A-Splitter? Clip A Split? We clearly need help with this.

The San Antonio Spurs had played arguably the perfect quarter offensively in this third period against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder then followed up the Spurs’ dizzying run with two buckets, and that was all Gregg Popovich needed to get incensed.

So, he called timeout and chewed out Tony Parker, just because he could.

This will get you 15 yards in the NFL. It’d probably get you T’d up in the NBA. But hey, it’s the Spurs mascot, and nobody is going to tech the mascot.

It’s over. No more. This might as well be Scott Brooks screaming “UNCLE.”

Ginobili was running at full speed, and still managed to flip a perfect behind-the-back pass to Parker, who stood for about 20 seconds with nobody guarding him before finally deciding to shoot the three-pointer. That was pretty much a microcosm of the third quarter.

OK, it’s time. It’s time for the Oklahoma City Thunder to stop trying to hedge and recover on pick and rolls. The Spurs are just too good at finding the open man in that split-second of confusion.

Here’s another idea: go under screens. It’s an admission of failure in a way, because it’s not an aggressive move, but it’s the only way the Thunder can keep San Antonio out of the lane.

In Game 1, of course, Popovich yelled at his team to “GET NASTY,” which ended up leading to this T-shirt. This means that we need to ask a couple questions. First, would you buy a T-shirt that says “It’s A Big Boy Game” or something of the sort? Second, if you could design a Popovich T-shirt, what other catchphrases would you put on it?

We don’t not promise to use this data in a meaningful way for our next business venture.

Tony Parker dominating a game + off the ball movement + good shot selection = 58 percent from the floor.

That’s just downright ridiculous.

Durant and Harden have both been extremely effective, with 14 points each. Westbrook has been a bit less effective offensively with eight points on 3-8 shooting, but that line might be acceptable if his play was passable on the other end. Instead, it’s been anything but. Taking nothing away from Parker, who has been brilliant, but Westbrook hasn’t done anything on the defensive end to hinder him. His defense, especially on screens, has been abysmal.

If Oklahoma City is going to get back into this game, they need to do basically everything better. Westbrook needs to do more on both ends, they need to do something to keep Parker from dominating, they need to pass the ball better, and Brooks needs to put down the crazy pills. It’ll take some serious work early in the third quarter to keep this game from getting out of hand. The good news for OKC is that Harden and Durant are hot enough to keep their team in the game.

I’m not even sure Duncan did that in his prime, much less at age 36. When he caught the pick-and-roll pass awkwardly, nobody could have guessed he’d finish like that, much less Ibaka. Instead, Duncan wound up with his right hand and took it right to Ibaka, putting him in a poster that I now really want to buy.