When my girlfriend asked what I was writing about, I told her I was working on this article about the NBA, in particular about the Thunder, the team we watched lose the other night in that miraculous game was how I described it. Her response was perfect.
“Aww… that was so sad,” she said. “They were so close. Frickin’ Steph Curry, he ruins everything.”
To me this summed up the collective bemoaning agreement of the rest of the league today and going forward, because barring injury, frickin’ Steph Curry really has ruined everything for everyone else in the NBA. Before and during every season for the last several years, these stolen Sonics were supposed to be a monster. Everything in the league was lined-up just right for their giant monster attack to take place on NBA cities for seasons to come. But their brass bounced James Harden in favor of Serge Ibaka, and Harden blossomed into a semi-defenseless superstar, but a superstar nonetheless, while Ibaka simply hasn’t progressed into anything much more than he was when they had the brass to choose him over Harden. From my eye-test, Ibaka seems to have even regressed just a bit. Still, the Thunder have two of the four or five best basketball players on the planet on their roster, and that alone could’ve, would’ve, and should’ve, barring injury, been enough to get them a ring by now. Injury, however, was not barred from their equation in the least. For three seasons in a row now, the Thunder were been bitten hard by the injury bug. First Westbrook in the first round in 2013, then Ibaka in the Conference Finals the next year, and the next game Durant plays in this season will give him twice as many games played as he had all of last season.
This past weekend saw the Thunder land several near knockout blows to the Warriors chances of winning that game. More than once the champs were on the mat taking a nine-and-a-half count, only to bounce back up each time and go the distance, then win by TKO. The T in that acronym stands for technicality. The technicality the Warriors play by which makes them different from every other team in the league is that they employ the glitch in the system. The glitch in the system begets the new system.
Oklahoma City out-rebounded the Thunder by 30 and they got beat. They were up big early, and again late, and none of it mattered because of Steph Curry. During the same game in which he set the record for most 3-pointers made in a season and extended his record for most games in a row with a made 3-pointer, with his last shot he not only tied the record for most three-pointers made in a game, but also rather emphatically won that game. The question is, in the process of doing all of those amazing things, did he also snake-bite any chance the Thunder had of winning a title?
This week the Thunder confront a juicy back to back Wednesday and Thursday night, and these two games should tell us quite a lot about what we can expect to see from the Thunder come playoff time. First they face the Clippers, a team playing better of late without their superstar slugger than they were when he was healthy and averaging a 23/9/5. In today’s NBA, it’s all about spacing, and the Clips simply have better spacing without Blake Griffin than they do when he’s out there at the un-stretched 4 spot with DeAndre Jordan at the 5. This is a fact of today’s league, and the grapevine told me it is because of pointing out this fact to Blake that a certain equipment manager got his face pounded in by the Kia spokesman. The problem for the Clippers is that either way, with or without Griffin, they aren’t great. They’re very good, but that is not going to be enough to win the title this year. So, is Oklahoma City closer to the merely very good Clippers, or closer to the two historically great teams sitting above them in the Western Conference standings? My gut tells me they are closer to great than very good. The way they looked for most of the game last Saturday night and the way they have played when everyone is healthy for most of the past four seasons tell me that as well.
After their clash with the Clippers, the Thunder will then find themselves in a quickie rematch against those aforementioned Warriors. Something tells me Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are not about to back down quietly. Still, it’s one thing to think that a team can beat the Warriors in a seven game series, and quite another to think that they will beat them.
Barring injury, I don’t think that any team will beat the Warriors in a series this postseason. Not the Spurs, that team down south who has done nothing this season except set a pace to tie for one of the highest single season win totals in league history and post the one of the highest average point-differentials in league history as well. The Warriors hit the Spurs so hard in their first meeting this season that they knocked LaMarcus Aldrige completely out of social media. Nor the Cavs, who but for a cold-shooting Lebron and a couple badly-timed injuries of their own during last year’s playoffs might have beaten those Warriors themselves in last season’s Finals. But those were last year’s Warriors, when Steph Curry were merely great. This season’s version of the Golden State team, and what has become of Curry in particular, is absolutely unreal. So, barring injury, how is any other team supposed to beat a glitch in the system, something that isn’t even supposed to be real?
This article was supposed to be about the Thunder, but frickin’ Steph Curry, he ruins everything. Let’s hope this latest injury doesn’t ruin him.