James Harden, Oklahoma City Thunder Make Yet Another Statement in Game 5 Victory

Postseason play in any sport is usually defined by two things:

No. 1: Players who step up and make a name for themselves in the realm of sports immortality.

No. 2: It can act as an agent to shut everyone up who doubted a team by saying that they can't hang with players who have a greater amount of experience in comparison.

So with that, I propose a question:

If you're a doubter of the Oklahoma City Thunder, are you a believer now?

If you're shocked, just imagine how the once-almighty San Antonio Spurs must feel.

Games 3 and 4 were the typical wins that the Thunder needed to get back into this series. With the way they've been playing at home this postseason, it was almost a given that they were going to head back to San Antonio tied at 2-2.

But what do people say now, now that OKC holds a commanding 3-2 lead in the Western Conference Finals with a chance to make a leap that would take most young teams five or six years to make?

Yes, this isn't a dream: The youngest team in the NBA is one win away from earning a trip to the NBA Finals.

And let's not forget that this franchise has only been in existence for a grand total of four years.

To the citizens of Seattle: I'm sorry.

What we're seeing right now from this basketball team is perhaps one of the best postseason runs of recent years. Most people knew that the Thunder would be the perennial favorites to get to the finals before the season began, but who would've thought they would be on the verge of getting there in the way they're doing it right now?

Game 5 was the true testament to how good and mature this team has become over the last few years. Even though OKC got off to a rough start by getting into early foul trouble—four ticky-tack fouls in the first two minutes of the game—they responded like a casual veteran team.

The Thunder continued to play aggressive defense and clawed back into the game, thus taking a three-point lead at the end of the first quarter.

Mind you, that this was despite Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook combining to make only two shots through the first 12 minutes.

The two megastars for OKC continued to struggle throughout the first half, but the role players who came out strong in Game 4 continued their outstanding play on Monday night.

Serge Ibaka, Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison didn't have the kind of frontcourt impact they had on the Spurs that they did on Saturday, but all three of them finally imposed their defensive presence on San Antonio and made a difference on the other side of the ball.

And while the Spurs emptied their bench and played almost every player on their roster, the Thunder only sent four players from their bench to the floor, and all of them played exceptionally well—Derek Fisher, Collison, Daequan Cook and of course, James Harden.

The four of them combined for 40 points, with Harden supplying half of them (20 in 35 minutes of play). Due to Gregg Popovich starting Manu Ginobili, the bench production of the Spurs only produced 22 points among six players off the bench.

Yikes.

After a quiet first half from Durant, the three-time scoring champion came out in the third quarter and provided 13 points, as the Thunder continued to pull away from the Spurs.

But as the Spurs have shown throughout the course of these playoffs, no lead is safe, which is why they rallied back from multiple double-digit deficits throughout this game.

Even with Durant hitting anything and everything on the floor, Tim Duncan and Ginobili rallied the Spurs back to within single digits on more than one occasion. Not to mention, they got a ton of help from the awful play of Westbrook in the fourth quarter.

But with under a minute to go and up by two, every Spurs fan won't be talking about the victory they almost grabbed from the jaws of defeat, nor will they discuss the 21 turnovers their team committed.

All they'll see for the next 48 hours is a man with an outrageous beard stepping back from Kawhi Leonard and drilling a cold-blooded three-pointer from the top of the key.

Now, the Thunder head back to OKC with a chance to send the Spurs home for the summer— with a momentum level so high that it's incomprehensible to put an accurate word to describe it.

OKC did what they needed to do in Games 3 and 4. They defended home court, and then took home court back by winning the pivotal game. 

Can San Antonio come back in Game 6 and send it back to the Alamo for the seventh game? Sure, for humor purposes, we'll say they can. Anything's possible in the NBA, and any team can win any game on a given night.

But dare we get caught up in what can happen, rather than what will happen?

The Thunder have found the blueprint to defeat the Spurs in a seven-game series. Their ball movement in the low post is baffling the San Antonio defense when OKC drives and kicks to their big men. The more they do that, the easier it is to kick the ball out back to Durant, Westbrook and Harden to make perimeter shots.

But the only knock on OKC for the next couple of days will be to get someone—anyone—to tell Westbrook that he needs to stop making ill-advised decisions and get Durant the ball in clutch situations.

Of all the good occurrences one can note from this game, the blunders that Westbrook made in the fourth quarter will overshadow any good point that can be made. And best believe that Skip Bayless is licking his chops as we speak.

But other than that, with the way the Thunder are playing and with that crowd about to be as loud as they've ever been, I propose a question that I asked after the Thunder took a 2-0 lead over the Los Angeles Lakers in the previous round:

Can any team stop the Oklahoma City Thunder?

Maybe one of the Eastern Conference teams can do it. As for the Spurs?

Their season is all but over.