// MIAMI — The old cliché says that you’ve gotta have your heart broken before you can become a champion, and after their 91-85 loss to the Miami Heat in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Sunday, the Oklahoma City Thunder may have just proven that they’re no exception to the rule. LeBron James’ Heat are attempting to do what Kobe Bryant’s Lakers did back in 2009—win the NBA Finals the very next year after losing them. Kevin Durant’s Thunder just
MIAMI — With Shane Battier draining nine 3-pointers through two games, it seems like an odd time to bring it up. But it is worth discussing: Zone defense. As the NBA Finals shift to Miami, I can’t help but remember last season: The Dallas Mavericks utilized all their parts and all of their schemes in an attempt to slow down the fast and powerful offense of the Miami Heat. If even for a string of possessions at a time, the Mavs made
I will be the first one to admit I’m late to the party on Kevin Durant. I drink coffee, not Red Bull. My headphones are Sennheiser, not Beats or SkullCandy. I didn’t have a Twitter account until nine months ago. I still don’t have a Smartphone. So when some new phenomenon permeates basketball’s pop culture, I’m not exactly at the front of the line. In fact, I didn’t even attend the parties for Harold Miner, Derrick Coleman, Glenn Robinson, Joe Smith, Damon
MIAMI — The NBA Finals remain in their infancy, relatively speaking, but here are five things we know for sure, right now, at this moment, after the participants practiced and spoke to the media Saturday on the eve of Game 3 of the best-of-seven series.
James Harden and his never-say-die mentality is a primary reason the Thunder are so relentless.
The reputation of an NBA player can be an incredibly fragile thing in the playoffs. You can go from being an absolute hero to a total scapegoat, game by game. Just ask Russell Westbrook. In the past, Westbrook was the target of criticism for shooting too much, not playing enough like a point guard and not getting the ball enough to Kevin Durant. Most of the complaints seemed to disappear this season when the Thunder catapulted their way to the Finals because more
// OKLAHOMA CITY — There comes a time in every viewer’s life when they experience a “Holy Shit” moment with Kevin Durant. Pardon the profanity. But damn, you know? For many of you, this was not the first time Durant made your jaw drop. The guy has been putting together games like this throughout the course of these playoffs (this was his seventh 30-point game), not to mention the past three regular seasons when the guy led the NBA in scoring. But there
OKLAHOMA CITY — There is an age-old truism pertaining to the NBA Finals that pertains to the question of old age. Young teams rarely, and we mean very rarely, win NBA championships. If the Oklahoma City Thunder somehow manage to emerge from the NBA Finals victorious, they’d be the first team with such a young nucleus to win the title since the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977 — a topic that our Hall of Fame columnist, Mark Heisler, addressed in his column
Now to let the Young Guns shoot it out. … If you’re going to hear that a lot the next week or two, some of these guns are a lot younger than others. By 2007, when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade had both been in NBA Finals, Kevin Durant had yet to be drafted; Russell Westbrook was an unheralded UCLA freshman who had played nine minutes a game; and James Harden was even less heralded as a high school sophomore. Durant, Westbrook and