Ok, so the Oklahoma City Thunder are in the NBA Finals, and the knee-jerk reaction will be that they are doomed to lose because they’ve never before performed on the big stage like so many of the Celtics and Heat have. We’re here to tell you that knee-jerk reaction argument is fatally flawed. Unbeknownst to many Americans, the Thunder’s dynamic duo of Durant and Westbrook have not only performed, but won, at the highest level on earth. That happened at the 2010 World
Somewhere in San Antonio, be it in somebody’s basement or in some large warehouse, are thousands upon thousands of “I Want Some Nasty” t-shirts with bleak futures as dishrags. Turns out the signature phrase of the 2012 NBA Western Conference finals was uttered by Gregg Popovich once again, but this one doesn’t have much of a future as a fashion statement. “We’re in trouble” was what Pop told point guard Tony Parker at the beginning of the fourth quarter, imploring his playmaker
Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals is a pivotal one for the Spurs, who face elimination for the first time this season. A loss would prove to be an epic meltdown, given all their success up to this point. Check out what some of the players had to say heading into the game, along with news around the league on Wednesday. Gary Neal has been dealing with flu-like symptoms and missed the morning shootaround, but is expected to play in
csprtContainer(); Something you may not have known about the Oklahoma City Thunder: despite their relatively young age, they are about as tightly-knit of a group as there is in the entire NBA. They hang out at each others’ houses. They are as much of a team on the court as hey are of of it. Their core has been together so long, including the most unheralded big player in this series, Nick Collison, that they have been able to summon a collective
By now, most are aware of the similarities between the games of James Harden and Manu Ginobili, who play the role of sixth man for their respectively dominant teams. Both are crafty left-handed assassins that can cause havoc driving into the paint with one euro-step after another and knock down deadly three-pointers. They even flop the same way. The mirror-images of each other dominated Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, and while Ginobili had the better stat-line, it was Harden
SAN ANTONIO – For the longest time, the San Antonio Spurs seemed so full of precision, so superior, so . . . invincible. Fifty days. That’s how long the Spurs went without losing a game. Before them, only three teams in NBA history had winning streaks of 20 or more games. They became the fourth. Included in that streak was eight straight in the playoffs. That number stretched to 10 when the Spurs handled the Thunder without significant problems in the first
