NBA Playoffs 2012: How Scott Brooks Has Outcoached Gregg Popovich

While San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich earned well-deserved Coach of the Year honors for his club's 2011-12 performance, he may have met his match in Scott Brooks.

With his Oklahoma City Thunder rolling through their second consecutive season of truly dominant basketball, Brooks made a pretty good case for that Coach of the Year Award as well—a distinction he held in 2010.

It isn't just that Brooks makes the right decisions. He's also a good fit for this particular roster, an encouraging presence who balances toughness with support. In other words, he's exactly who you want at the helm of a club led by young stars.

But the 46-year-old coach has proven to be far more than a good teacher, especially in these Western Conference Finals.

He's made the kind of adjustments you'd expect from a playoff-tested guy with 15 or 20 years of experience—or maybe someone like Popovich.

After Russell Westbrook stalled in Game 3 of this series, the Thunder went to their bigs for help in Game 4. Needless to say, they answered the bell.

Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins combined for 41 points, and Ibaka went a perfect 11-of-11 from the floor. Westbrook struggled once again, but it didn't matter with the supporting cast picking up the slack—a variable that San Antonio didn't appear to anticipate.

Even more importantly, when the series swung to Oklahoma City for Games 3 and 4, Brooks put Thabo Sefolosha on Tony Parker, a defensive adjustment that proved more than frustrating for San Antonio's star point guard.

After racking up 34 points in Game 2, Parker scored just 28 points in Games 3 and 4 combined. His 5-of-15 shooting performance in the last of those games gave OKC a needed edge in an otherwise closely contested game.

Brooks may be remembered most in this series for telling Kevin Durant to keep shooting the ball in the second half of that fourth quarter. Durant listened and wound up scoring 18 of his 36 points in the final seven minutes of regulation.

Of course, the coach won't take all the credit for that determined closing performance, but it suggests he knows when to say the right thing. Sometimes, that's all you can ask from a coach.

As he takes a 3-2 series lead back to Oklahoma City with an opportunity to knock the Spurs out of the postseason for good, it's worth taking stock of the Thunder's less-heralded superstar. Scott Brooks has some talent to work with, but he's consistently put that talent in a position to succeed.