OAKLAND -- We should first wrap our collective conscious around the idea that the Oklahoma City Thunder can absolutely win this series. They have two (healthy) superstars in their prime combined with a rugged front line and a coach who apparently saved all of his genius adjustments for the postseason.
This may finally be the Thunder’s time
Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are finally both healthy, and OKC is hot at the right time. They can beat the Warriors.
We all knew that coming into the conference finals and while it wasn’t exactly shocking that OKC could walk out of Oracle with a 108-102 win in Game 1, it was still rather jarring to see them rally from a 13-point halftime deficit and make enough plays down the stretch to steal a game that was eminently winnable. Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised anymore. They certainly weren’t, which was why their postgame celebration was muted.
"I mean, what's to celebrate? We didn't win the championship," Kevin Durant said. "We're playing in the Western Conference Finals against a great team. We got a W the first Game 1, but there is a lot of basketball to be played, so we can't be too excited. It was a good win for us, but we're not going to be jumping up and down, chest-bumping on the court. We've got a lot more basketball to play."
The Thunder scored 38 points in the third quarter and held Golden State to just 14 in the fourth. They battled the lineup of death to a draw and controlled the boards and the pace. One of their stars -- Russell Westbrook -- balanced a horrendous first half when he shot just 1-for-8 with a sublime second half that included 19 third-quarter points. Their other star -- Durant -- missed numerous makeable shots down the stretch before finally sinking the backbreaker late in the fourth. As always, stars solve problems.
Yes, Westbrook traveled and it was yet another blatant missed call in a postseason that has come to be defined in part by the last-two-minute reports the NBA releases. But he didn’t throw the ball away or make bad decisions. That was the Warriors’ doing and when you put yourself at the mercy of a whistle, sometimes it’s not going to go your way.
“Lot of quick shots, way too many quick shots,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “Five minutes left in the game and we’re down four or whatever, and we were acting like we had 20 seconds left. Five minutes is an eternity. We know how we have to play. We have to pass and move and create rhythm for ourselves with our screening and our cutting. And I just felt like we took way too many ones that took us out of our rhythm.”
We’ve all known that the Thunder are capable of doing things like this. They’ve reached the conference finals every year they’ve been healthy over the last six seasons. That they saved themselves for this point in the season is a new twist on their familiar method, but this is what they’ve done year after year with KD and Westbrook. So, if we shouldn’t be surprised, we also shouldn’t overreact to a game that was played in fits and starts. Neither team was particularly crisp. Both coaches were searching for the right combinations.
What was unexpected was how disjointed the Warriors looked at times. They made careless passes and took rushed shots. Normally that’s an acceptable trade-off for their offensive brilliance. They have a way of making chaos seem scripted and when in doubt, just let Steph Curry carry them home with his otherworldly shotmaking. That didn’t happen, at least, it didn’t happen enough. Every time it looked like they were ready to put the hammer down, the Thunder made their own little runs to keep within striking distance.
As Draymond Green put it: “I think our defensive game plan was pretty good, really good. Offensively we sucked. Obviously you’re down 1-0, you’ve got to play with a little more desperation. But there is a difference between desperation and panicking, and we’re not panicking at all.”
But let’s give some credit to OKC for all of this. The Thunder have ramped it up defensively over the last few weeks and they made it hard for Golden State to run its offense. As much as any other factor, their effort on the defensive end has turned them from a team with a puncher’s chance into a dangerous one with the legit opportunity to go the distance.
As much as lineups and tactics, this transformation has been Billy Donovan’s biggest coaching breakthrough. He noted that he may have tried to do too much earlier in the season, which is a common mistake for coaches making the jump from college, where there’s more practice time and fewer games, to the pros where consistency is the only way to survive the 82-game season.
“I think a couple things,” Donovan said. “One was probably my fault earlier in the year trying to, I don’t want to say play different pick-and-roll coverages, but more trying to have guys make reads in pick-and-roll defenses. I think at times, to be honest with you, I think it was a little too confusing for them and it was too much.”
What they have done is put all the pressure on Golden State. It’s an interesting position for the Warriors who twice rallied from 2-1 deficits in the playoffs last year by winning games on the road. This is a different scenario, but the principles stay the same: win the next game and go on from there.
“Well, we’re down 1-0, so it’s a long series,” Kerr said. “Our players know that to win the next one would be good, right? Yeah. So we don’t want to go down 2-0. I don’t need to tell our players, ‘hey, get desperate because we’ve got to win Game 2.’ They feel it, so we’ll come out and play better.”
OKC did what it needed to do. It’s not a surprise, ultimately, but it is an intriguing twist on a playoff season that has mostly gone according to form. Game 2 will tell us a lot about both teams, but we already know that OKC deserves to be here and that the Thunder have every reason to believe that this may finally be their time.
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This is what happens when you mess with the Thunder
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