Be Careful, OKC Thunder, You Have the Tiger by the Tail
Getting the Golden State Warriors' full attention is the mother of all mixed blessings.
For better and worse, the Oklahoma City Thunder have done it.
OKC's truly impressive 108-102 Game 1 victory—marked by attentive defense, resiliency, shrewd lineup decisions and a Russell Westbrook explosion—forced the Warriors to briefly consider their own mortality. That's not something that happens often, but the prospect of an 0-2 series hole galvanized the Dubs, resulting in swift, thorough, terrible-to-behold retribution.
Golden State buried the Thunder in Game 2 by a final score of 118-91, running its record after losses to an unfathomable 12-0 this season.
And there's the root of what should be some seriously conflicted Oklahoma City emotions heading into Sunday's Game 3 at home: The Warriors, with a 100 percent success rate, respond to defeats with overwhelming victories. And more broadly, the more severe the failure, the more focused and complete the subsequent triumph.
Let's unpack this.
The Thunder have a lot to be happy about
Their Game 1 effort proved the defense that defined an easy elimination of the San Antonio Spurs was real. Oklahoma City forced Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson into rushed second-half shots, switched liberally, produced turnovers and ultimately held the best offense in the league to 14 fourth-quarter points.
Though Game 2 played out differently, the Thunder must still be encouraged by the fact that they're in good position despite not getting simultaneous strong performances from Westbrook and Kevin Durant. The former was terrific Monday but struggled Wednesday. The latter scored efficiently in Game 2 but turned the ball over far too often.
Westbrook and Durant are going to play well in the same game (for the whole game) eventually; Golden State is like everyone else in this specific regard: It can't keep both superstars under wraps for an entire series.
More granularly, Westbrook did well to stifle Curry in Game 1, hounding him off the ball (with help), denying touches and goading the MVP into too many one-on-one attacks.
These are all positives, and the most encouraging thing about Oklahoma City's performance in the series' first game was its understated reaction to success.
"What's to celebrate?" Durant rhetorically asked, per Ben Golliver of SI.com. "We didn't win the championship. We're playing in the Western Conference Finals against a great team...It was a good win for us, but we're not going to be jumping up and down, chest-bumping on the court. We've got a lot more basketball to play."
See that? Perspective.
Similarly, there was no panic after Game 2.
"Move on," Durant said, per Royce Young of ESPN.com. "We just move past it and figure out what we have to do better. No crazy emotions."
The Thunder got their split in Oakland. Home-court advantage, for now, is theirs.
But...
They should be wary of awakening the Warriors with that series-opening win. All those good things they did to take a 1-0 lead pushed the Warriors to a point of focus (perhaps even desperation) they've rarely reached. Golden State got serious in Game 2, leveraged all of its talent, limited its spurts of inattention and tuned key strategic elements.
"Being down 1-0, we had that fear," Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said, per Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle. “We knew we needed a win badly, and we responded well. Now, we’ve got to go there and win a game."
The Warriors rendered Andre Roberson unplayable by doubling down on Draymond Green, leaving him to play free safety. Enes Kanter, after a solid second half in Game 1, was so relentlessly targeted in Game 2 that he may now occupy the same unusable category as Roberson. Gradually, Golden State is stripping away Oklahoma City's options.
Salvation might have to come in the form of an all-out Westbrook inferno, but is it realistic to ask for his trademark maniacal aggression on offense while also expecting the perfect defensive focus necessary to keep Curry from shaking loose? Little in Westbrook's history suggests he can do both for long stretches.
And Curry's 15 points in under two minutes of Game 2's third quarter proved the MVP needs only the briefest lapse to decide a contest.
The biggest concern for the Thunder incorporates all of the preceding worries and rolls them into one: Golden State made its adjustments after Game 1. It found ways to exploit the Thunder's switches and devote more of its own defensive attention to Durant and Westbrook.
Oklahoma City must now make adjustments to counter those adjustments, and that's something no opponent has managed to do against these Warriors. Just ask the Memphis Grizzlies and Cleveland Cavaliers, who pushed Golden State to make major strategic changes last year and then had absolutely no answer afterward.
Few teams even reach the point of forcing the Warriors to change, so there's a small victory in that, and this Thunder team's ability to make Golden State work is yet another sign it may be the Warriors' most formidable opponent in the last two years.
Paradoxically, that's the scariest aspect of all.
The Warriors can't help but recognize the most serious obstacle they've faced, and as a result, they're fully engaged in a way they rarely are. Golden State won 73 games with sporadic focus, and Oklahoma City did enough to sharpen that focus, to dial it all the way in.
OKC proved in Oakland it could beat the Warriors, that it could threaten them. But if this season showed anything, it's this: You really, really don't want to face the Dubs when they feel threatened.
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