Oklahoma City Thunder Look for Redemption in Western Conference Finals
Well, at least it was competitive for the first two quarters.
But once Russell Westbrook turned it on in the third quarter and made every shot imaginable in a game of Horse, it was only a matter of time before Kevin Durant and company joined in on the fun.
Business has now been handled, and the young guns of the Oklahoma City Thunder are heading back to the Western Conference finals for a second straight year, after defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 106-90 to win the series in five games.
The dynamic duo of Westbrook and Durant combined for 53 points—Westbrook with a team-high 28—and James Harden performed his usual routine coming off the bench with 17 points. Not bad for a day's work for OKC's Big Three.
As for the Lakers' Big Three, it was more like the Big One as Kobe Bryant scored almost half of L.A.'s points with 42 points on 18-for-33 shooting. He attempted, once again, to put the entire weight of the franchise on his back and did a valiant job doing such, but the supporting cast once again couldn't keep up in the second half.
Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol combined for 24 points on 9-for-24 shooting, and Metta World Peace didn't provide enough offense by only taking five shots and making four of them. The entire Laker bench contributed only five points in the game.
Yes, that was five total bench points for Los Angeles. The Thunder bench had 35. And if this article could list every other problem the Lakers had, it may be over 1,000 words by now.
But the coffin has been shut, the nails surround the lid and the church is closed for the day. The Lakers' season comes to yet another abrupt end in the second round.
Now the focus for the Thunder comes in the conference finals yet again, and after taking down the two giant pegs of Western Conference supremacy, OKC now looks ahead to perhaps the gold standard of the NBA in the last decade:
The San Antonio Spurs.
There's no question that the Spurs have been on an impressive run for the last couple of months. They haven't loss a single playoff game thus far, and you know they're scary when Tim Duncan is playing like it's 2002 all over again.
But the preview of the series will come when time draws closer.
The Thunder aren't just happy to be back to the conference finals—it's become an expectation of theirs to get to where they are. The label of being the young, up-and-coming team that hopes to achieve their goals is officially off the table.
Just from the last two series alone, Oklahoma City has improved leaps and bounds more than what they were expected of. They know how to close games, and they also learned that an entire game lasts for 48 minutes. Hence the five fourth-quarter comebacks they've made up until this point.
The Thunder gave the Dallas Mavericks all they could handle last year in their first appearance in the conference finals. For all we know, the way some of those games were going, it could've been OKC in the finals against the Heat. But they've learned from their experience and are more determined than ever before.
Now all that's left for Oklahoma City to get there is a trip through the Alamo. And just like people remember the Alamo, they will remember this series.
That was a bad joke, right?
