Finally making sense of the series
Would you believe I wrote 750 words about the Thunder late Saturday night before deciding it was crap, unsalvageable, a lost cause?
I did, and it’s hard to explain. I haven’t changed how I feel about it, but I couldn’t make it work. And trying to keep the narrative going only made it worse.
Now, who cares about narrative?
I’ve got stuff to say.
Funny thing, the Thunder are hard to write about.
I’m good at finding and describing the space between how a roster’s playing and where it could be playing, should be playing or is in its own way. The Thunder, though, are so rarely in their own way.
For example, everybody wants to pick on Chet Holmgren right now and late in Game 7 NBC analyst Jamal Crawford said an interesting thing.
“I would rather he be 1 for 15 in this game,” he said. “He’s 1 for 2.”
It sounds smart because if Holmgren’s 1 for 15, he’s clearly being aggressive, just not accurate. But Crawford couldn’t have been more wrong.
Because Oklahoma City shot 44.6 percent (37 of 83) overall and 34.3 percent (12 of 35) from 3-point land in their 111-103 Game 7 Western Conference finals loss to San Antonio. Would you rather have Holmgren take 13 more shots, 10 from 2-point land and three from 3 and miss them all?
What do the Thunder shoot from the floor then and what’s the final margin? It might be 25 instead of eight, the game over in the third quarter rather than the final minute.
It’s true, Victor Wembanyama erased Holmgren offensively, but that’s because he’s a freak, this generation’s Chamberlain, something we’ve not seen before.
Do you really want Holmgren to go straight at that guy? I’d rather he occupy him as best he can and call it good.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault let Holmgren off the hook during his postgame turn at the mic.
“I actually thought he played his minutes pretty well,” he said.
The numbers kind of backed him up. Over 33 minutes of court time, Holmgren finished minus-7, same as Cason Wallace over his 36.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, after finishing with the hardest-earned 35 points and nine assists of his career, was minus-7 over his 43.
There’s no column waiting for me under the headline, “Thunder have a Chet problem,” because what Holmgren has is a Wembanyama problem, just like every other big man in the league.
So, a few things.
One, with a healthy Jalen Williams and a healthy A.J. Mitchell, it’s the Thunder playing the Knicks in the Finals, not the Spurs.
SGA played in distress the whole series because OKC, beyond Jared McCain, who plays many of his minutes while SGA rests, did not have another playmaking ball handler, unless you want to count Wallace, which you can, but he’s nothing like J-Dub or Mitchell.
If you were throwing your hands up wondering why SGA had nowhere to go, was so easily trapped, had to work so, so, so hard to make anything happen, it’s easy. The guys who relieve that pressure weren’t available.
Want a great stat about that?
Here are the turnover numbers in each game.
Game 1: Thunder 15, Spurs 23.
Game 2: Thunder 10, Spurs 21.
Game 3: Thunder 11, Spurs 15.
Game 4: Thunder 20, Spurs 13.
Game 5: Thunder 17, Spurs 15.
Game 6: Thunder 13, Spurs 13.
Game 7: Thunder 16, Spurs 12.
The longer the series went, OKC became looser with the ball and San Antonio became tighter. With J-Dub and Mitchell available, that doesn’t happen.
Heck, the Thunder’s probably in the Finals if either one of them, J-Dub or Mitchell, is available, but they weren’t, so here we are, looking forward to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Game 1’s tonight.
Two, the Thunder did not adequately respect the Spurs.
In Games 2 and 5, the first quarter was basically even, neither team running out to a big lead. In the rest, not so.
Game 1: Spurs score first seven points, lead 12-3, 7:28 remaining.
Game 3: Spurs score game’s first 15 points.
Game 4: Spurs lead 23-8, 4:14 remaining.
Game 6: Spurs lead 35-22 at quarter’s end.
Game 7: Spurs lead 27-13, 5:07 remaining.
The Thunder won Game 3 anyway and briefly led Game 7 in the third quarter, but that doesn’t mean playing from 14 points down in the first quarter didn’t matter because it made all the difference in the world.
The only sense to make of it is, no matter how many times the Spurs beat them in the regular season, the Thunder still failed to believe they could keep finding the same level they kept showing them they could.
Three, it’s not over.
The narrative saying the Western Conference is the Spurs’ playground now is wrong.
In future seasons, the Thunder may be healthy. In future seasons, the Spurs will have the Thunder’s respect. In future seasons Sam Presti will still be Sam Presti and Daigneault will still be Daigneault and that’s to OKC’s advantage, too.
The Spurs got this one.
Doesn’t mean they’ll get the next one, or the next one, or the next one.
Tough loss.
Lesson learned.
Go Golden Knights.