Path to Playoffs for Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder Is Hardly Impossible

The penultimate piece fell into place this past Friday, the night All-Star Russell Westbrook—one month after suffering a broken right hand—returned in a raucous 32-point, eight-assist, seven-rebound rage in a 105-78 blowout win over the New York Knicks.

It's a scene that may well pale to what the puzzle's final fragment reveals.

On the heels of Westbrook's return, the Oklahoma City Thunder's ranks will be strengthened once again by the comeback of reigning MVP Kevin Durant Tuesday night.

Thunder coach Scott Brooks, per ESPN's Marc Stein, said Durant will make his 2014-15 debut during the team's tilt with the New Orleans Pelicans:

Last season, Durant and Westbrook averaged a combined 53.8 points, 13.1 rebounds and 12.4 assists. The Thunder have needed a shot in the arm, and they should get exactly that from arguably the league's best two-man tandem.

With Durant and Westbrook back in action, the Thunder—now 5-12 and far below the Western Conference fold—suddenly don't look like lottery fodder after all.

OKC's playoff prospects are far from shot, however rocky and rife with pitfalls the path may be.

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Begin with the most immediate: Of the Thunder's next 10 games, seven of them are on the road. It's the kind of stretch that might sink a lesser team. Read: one that doesn't boast two of the 10 best players in the world.

The good news is that only five of those are against teams currently above .500. The Philadelphia 76ers, the Detroit Pistons, the Minnesota Timberwolves—these should be prime pickings for a predator back on the prowl.

Scanning the schedule, it’s not hard to see the Thunder making up the 4.5 games of ground between them and the 10-8 Phoenix Suns.

To blaze their way back to the Finals, though, will require OKC to do much more than simply save playoff face. The foremost hurdle: getting the Thunder's offense—currently ranked 29th in overall efficiency—back up to snuff.

Immediate as Durant and Westbrook's impact will be, this is by no means a plug-and-profit proposition. Recalibrating a team's entire chemistry is seldom a simple task, no matter how catalytic the elements.

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Just how upside-down has OKC's pecking order become? At least four players—Reggie Jackson, Jeremy Lamb, Perry Jones and Serge Ibaka—are currently registering usage rates north of 20 percent, according to Basketball-Reference.com.

Scott Brooks will take any port in the storm, of course. And there's certainly a case to be made for using one's short-handedness to bolster the bench’s confidence. Call it the San Antonio Spurs effect.

Still, there are certain to be learning curves aplenty once the Thunder's two alpha dogs get thrown back into the pound.

More importantly, as Thunder.com's Nick Gallo recently pointed out, fixing OKC's offense should pay immediate and lasting dividends on defense, where the Thunder have somehow managed a No. 8 ranking in spite of its superstars' absences:

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The two ends of the floor are inexorably tied together, however. If the Thunder is turning the ball over or missing shots off of bad possessions with poor floor balance, it gives its opponent easy opportunities to get baskets in transition. If it is executing on offense, however, and either forcing its opponent to pull the ball out of the net and in-bound the ball, it has a chance to get the five-man defensive shell set up.

Even if the Thunder misses its shot, if it has proper spacing and is taking shots within the flow of strong offense, the court will be balanced with players in position to get back on defense. Limiting the stretches where the offense doesn't execute and defense can't get set up is the key to getting over the hump moving forward.

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This link between a team's offensive fluidity and defensive readiness isn't exactly headline news. Sometimes—as has been the case with the occasionally defensively anemic Cleveland Cavaliers—that relationship is best expressed in the opposite. Good luck quickening the pace when stops are at a painful premium.

At the same time, forging upper-echelon efficiencies at both ends of the floor isn't terra incognita for these Thunder. In fact, they've finished in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive rating for the past three seasons.

Doing so again might not be sufficient to win an NBA championship, but it certainly seems necessary.

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More crucial, it seems, is whether the team has enough in the way of next-level leaps—from players like Jackson, Jones and Steven Adams in particular—to give Durant and Westbrook the cover they need to propel OKC to the top.

The Thunder are just about done with their fiery trial. Now it's time to see whether weathering those woes made them better prepared for forging ahead at full force.

"We looked a lot better than what we were," Adams told The Oklahoman's Darnell Mayberry following Westbrook's return. "The pace was a lot better. Everyone was excited to have him back. He just gave us a lot of energy. It's pretty close to what we need to get to."

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"Pretty close" might sound like a coy understatement. Regaining the reigning MVP is hardly a matter of minuscule increments, after all.

For the Thunder, getting Durant and Westbrook back at full strength must yield more than a modicum of comfort.

Then there's this, a decidedly more mathematical matter: According to ESPN's Kevin Pelton (subscription required), OKC's chances of crashing the playoff picture are anything but a perilous prospect:

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The Thunder might play at better than a 59-win clip when fully healthy, since last year's record did include an extended absence for Westbrook after knee surgery. At the same time, the possibility of re-injury could keep Oklahoma City from living up to that pace.

Still, the numbers make it clear that it is not yet too late for the Thunder to make a playoff push. Oklahoma City's chances are still contingent on Durant returning to the lineup soon, but in that scenario it's certainly possible for the Thunder to post a win total in the high 40s and reach the postseason.

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The Western Conference very much remains a historically hellish gauntlet—a minefield of mind-boggling talent, where the smallest seeding misstep or playoff-series hole can mean the difference between a primrose postseason path and another summer of dreams deferred.

Durant and Co. are a better team than they were in 2012, the year they ran headlong and doomed into LeBron James' Miami Heat. Problem is, so are many of their conference cohorts.

To make good on its championship promise, then, requires OKC to not merely survive, but thrive—as a matter of makeup, playoff path aside and past demons be damned.

The Thunder certainly haven't made things easy on themselves. Good thing, then, that they're about to count in their favor a pair of players that has always made it look so.