2016 Western Conference Semifinals
San Antonio 97, Oklahoma City 111
Series tied 2-2

That is the Oklahoma City Thunder team I feared would eventually show up in this series.

It’s fair to say that OKC’s ceiling as a team is higher than San Antonio’s, but that San Antonio is more consistent. A lot more consistent. But when peak OKC shows up, the Spurs are in big trouble.

We know about the Thunder’s two best players and what they can do. The problem with the team lies in all of their surrounding pieces. They have the ability to be the best bench in the league… or to get run off the floor in any one game. They also suffer from having too many one dimensional players, players that either excel at offense or defense, and really hurt you in the other.

In Game 4, the Thunder’s “others” showed up in a big way. Steven Adams was the best big man in the game for either team, and his ability to roll to the rim stretched and destroyed the Spurs’ interior defense. Enes Kanter showed why he averaged 15 and 15 against the Spurs in the regular season, and even showed off some 3-point range. Dion Waiters looked like a prototypical 3-and-D guy out there, hitting huge shots and playing stout defense. (Reminds me of what we miss from Danny Green in these losses.)

If the Thunder can get consistent offense from Adams, and consistent defense from Waiters and Kanter, they’ve found their rotation. And it might be better than what the Spurs can throw out there.

After a great 1st quarter, the Spurs defense checked out of the game, giving up 28, 32, and 34 points in consecutive quarters. That is bad. Some of it was incredible shot-making by Durant, who had his best game of the series, but it was also the Thunder being more consistently able to play 5 good offensive players and the Spurs having no counter for them.

Now it’s time to officially talk about Duncan. Without him, the defense struggles. It’s telling that his only consistent minutes came in that 1st quarter. But he can no longer be reliable on offense. In fact, his presence in the offense allows the Thunder to do to the Spurs what the Spurs love to do to other teams: slag off and crowd the paint.

With Duncan out, the rim is wide open. The Thunder were able to attack and score. When they missed, they collected offensive rebounds. I counted 5 big offensive rebounds in the 4th quarter alone. West isn’t big enough to contend inside with Kanter and Adams. With Westbrook often crashing the boards, the fight on the glass turns hectic, often favoring the more athletic Thunder.

(It also didn’t help that the Spurs had at least three to four deflections almost turn into steals that miraculously bounced back to the Thunder for easy points. Those are killers, but that’s the way the ball bounces, quite literally.)

The fundamental riddle is this: without Duncan, the Thunder might be too big for the Spurs; with Duncan, the Spurs offense might not be good enough to win.

While the Spurs defense was shaky in this game, the other end of the court was no better. The offense has resorted to isolation and stagnation. (Remind you of the Thunder?) There is no movement by ball or player. Most offense doesn’t even begin until the shot clock has ticked below 10, and in most cases, it’s just a player attempting to create a sliver of space.

We have great shot makers in Leonard, Aldridge, and Parker, but that’s not how the Spurs win games, let alone series. Particularly with Aldridge and Leonard struggling with their shot. (Parker was great again, but gone are the days when he can win games alone.) There was nowhere to go on offense, and it felt like any points scored late were more out of luck than anything else.

If the Spurs can’t hit 3-pointers to loosen up the defense, it’s too hard to score points and puts too much pressure on the defense to be perfect. The Spurs only hit 2 3-pointers in the game, but coming in the span of about 20 seconds at the end of the 3rd quarter. Only one was actually a good shot.

More telling, they only took 12 all game, 2 of which were in the final minute by Kawhi Leonard when the game was mostly out of reach and the team desperately needed to hit some 3s.

We all know how much better the offense functions when the team is hitting 3s, but sometimes just taking them can be enough. The Thunder kept shooting them, and eventually it paid off as they hit several big 3s in the 4th quarter. They finished with 9 makes, putting them a whopping +21 over the Spurs from deep.

When the Thunder get rolling and playing downhill, they are nearly unbeatable. This has been the overwhelming frustration with them for years: how do they not play like this more often?

The flip side: the Spurs entered the 4th quarter with a lead, on the road, playing a pretty poor game. The Thunder absolutely had to win this game, and that desperation carried the day. But the final margin will not indicate how close this game actually was.

The Spurs have the ability to hang around and hang around, and you have to beat them. The Thunder, on any given night, are happy to be beaten or even beat themselves.

Which takes us back to the beginning: the Thunder have a higher ceiling, but the Spurs are more consistently great. Which is better?

That’s what this series will determine, and essentially what these two teams have been fighting out over the last 4 seasons.

If this series (and 2014, and 2012) has taught us anything, it’s that each game is its own story with its own rhythm and progression. Two years ago, these two teams were in the same position, tied 2-2 in a series headed back to San Antonio. We all know how that one ended.

Game 5 is Tuesday night in San Antonio.

Go Spurs Go.

2016 Western Conference Semifinals
San Antonio 100, Oklahoma City 96
Spurs lead series 2-1

It’s fitting that the Spurs iced the game by making four clutch free throws in the final minute, considering they had suffered from the yips up until that point, missing 10 of their previous 30 attempts.

It’s doubly fitting that the two players who salted the game away with those clutch free throws were the team’s top two performers: Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard.

Before we talk about those two, though, we should mention LaMarcus Aldridge. While he didn’t hit just about every shot – as he did in the previous two games – he was still a beast in this game. What I’ve been most impressed with this season, getting to watch him more closely, is just how hard he plays on both ends. Players labeled as ‘jump shooters’ often also carry the tag ‘soft’, as that is the implication often meant. But LaMarcus is a beast and is happy to do the dirty work. While he may not be the Spurs’ best player, he is the hub through which the offense (and often the defense) is orchestrated. That is hard and thankless work.

After the Game 2 loss, it was clear he needed help. Top of that list: Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs actual best all-around player. To start the game, I thought he seemed to still be pressing on offense and having trouble finding his spots and his rhythm. He looked a little discombobulated. (And yet he finished with 31 points. Naturally.)

What makes Kawhi so special, though, is that when he is locked into a game, his effort and energy alone are off the charts. We think of Westbrook as the prototypical high-energy player, a madman barreling for loose balls and creating fast breaks out of nothing. Kawhi doesn’t make the angry faces, but he plays just as hard. Harder, even. The energy it takes to be a lockdown defender and a primary offensive weapon can’t be overstated. And he did both while playing 40 minutes.

The two plays that stand out in this game to me are the two offensive rebounds Kawhi grabbed in the 4th quarter: one by just completely overpowering Kanter, the other by just wanting it more in the final seconds of the game (as cliche as that sounds). Energy and effort.

Kawhi’s offensive game will sometimes look a little forced and herky jerky. To truly measure his impact, though, you have to look beyond that, because Kawhi affects the game from nearly every possible angle. This is what makes him one of the best players in the league.

Also stepping up? One Mr. Tony Parker. If you want an illustration as to how Parker can age gracefully, the way Duncan and Ginobili have before him, this game is the prototype. Become a more reliable spot shooter while extending to 3-point range, know when to attack the rim, and orchestrate the offense, getting everybody involved. Kind of a late career Jason Kidd. (He did those things while winning a title in Dallas).

Time and again Tony made clutch shots, keeping the Spurs in range or just out of reach. He is shooting the corner 3 with confidence now, and that is huge. As the team evolves toward the Kawhi-LaMarcus iteration, a 3-point shooting PG becomes even more important.

The best part of Tony’s game, though, was the rest of his numbers: 8 rebounds. 5 assists. 1 turnover. 50% shooting. A complete game and a perfect ‘3rd option’ game.

Pop also had a great game. I criticized him after Game 2; he wasn’t messing around in Game 3. The rotation shortened. (Sorry, Kyle.) Aldridge, Parker, Green, and Leonard all played big minutes, and either Green or Leonard was on the court for about 46 of the 48 minutes. Rather than sit Kawhi for long stretches, he gave him short breaks and then put him back in, maximizing both his rest and his court time.

Perhaps most critically, Pop managed the rotation of the second big player expertly. In my notes, I was critical of David West’s game up until the start of the 4th. It really felt like he was trying to do too much. (The whole team, in general, seemed intent on attacking individual weak defenders one-on-one, rather than force them to make their mistakes in team defense.) At the top of the quarter, I wrote: “West closing?”

We forget, though, that West has a career of playing strong and tough in the playoffs, particularly in those runs with the Pacers. This is why we brought him here. And this is why Pop sits where he sits and I sit where I sit. He clearly saw something he liked with West out there with the other four starters, and he rode it.

West’s shot seemed a bit off, but he is very good at passing and keeping the ball moving in the offense, and he made that one huge basket that put the team up by 7 with about 1:20 left.

The more interesting decision, of course, was only playing Duncan 14 minutes: two 7-minute stints to start the game. I don’t want to talk too much about Duncan right now, but it does seem as if he is crossing an imaginary line on the offensive side of the court, where he is unable to produce at the level he thinks he can or that he wants to.

Part of why the Spurs have been able to be so successful as the Big 3 age is that they are honest in their self-assessments and willing to ask for and accept help. And while Duncan is still a tremendous defensive help, he is more and more an offensive liability in certain match-ups. It’s a credit to Pop that he can see this and make the right line-up choices even at the expense of his all-time best (and probably favorite) player. It’s also a credit to Duncan that he can accept this professionally and personally.

And of course, Duncan comes back in for 5 seconds to make the inbounds pass that helps to seal the game. Then he sits back down on the bench and has a good laugh with his teammates. Sometimes images say a lot more than words.

All this writing, and I’ve yet to mention the Thunder. I’ve yet to mention Westbrook, perhaps the most polarizing player in the league. I think he’s a great player that sometimes let’s his greatness hurt the team. I think the Spurs defend him in such a way to bring out his worst tendencies, and the Westbrook we see play against the Spurs is there almost wholly by design of the Spurs’ game plan.

When I watch the Thunder, I also wonder what Durant would look like playing in a more disciplined, egalitarian system. He is a transcendent player, and we may only be seeing 80% of what he is capable of doing. Talent needs discipline to be fully realized. One thing we can say about this Thunder team, without assigning culpability, is that they truly lack a certain discipline.

Of course, their talent alone can beat the Spurs. We’ve all seen that movie before. So while winning Game 3 puts the Spurs back in control of the series, this is far from over.

Game 4 is tomorrow evening.

Go Spurs Go.