ViceCity86
06-03-2012, 04:02 AM
OKLAHOMA CITY -- If you were going to bet on a role player shooting 11-for-11 in a Western Conference finals game, you wouldn't have picked anybody on the Thunder.
And if you were going to pick one team's "non-Big 3" to shoot a sizzling 25-for-35 to swing an important game, you certainly wouldn't have picked the Thunder.
But it was Oklahoma City's secondary players who owned Game 4, a 109-103 win over San Antonio that tied the series at two games apiece. And it's that fact -- and not the late-game scoring eruption from Kevin Durant -- that marks this game as a potentially historic one in the continuing evolution of this team, particularly if it ends in a championship parade through whatever part of this city isn't under construction at that time.
Don't get me wrong, Durant was amazing -- after the Spurs cut a 15-point Thunder lead to four midway through the fourth, he scored 16 straight Thunder points to put the game away. More amazingly, he only needed nine trips to do it.
That was awesome, but we've seen him do this before.
http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2012/story/_/id/8002571/nba-playoffs-oklahoma-city-thunder-flip-script-game-4-win
And if you were going to pick one team's "non-Big 3" to shoot a sizzling 25-for-35 to swing an important game, you certainly wouldn't have picked the Thunder.
But it was Oklahoma City's secondary players who owned Game 4, a 109-103 win over San Antonio that tied the series at two games apiece. And it's that fact -- and not the late-game scoring eruption from Kevin Durant -- that marks this game as a potentially historic one in the continuing evolution of this team, particularly if it ends in a championship parade through whatever part of this city isn't under construction at that time.
Don't get me wrong, Durant was amazing -- after the Spurs cut a 15-point Thunder lead to four midway through the fourth, he scored 16 straight Thunder points to put the game away. More amazingly, he only needed nine trips to do it.
That was awesome, but we've seen him do this before.
http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2012/story/_/id/8002571/nba-playoffs-oklahoma-city-thunder-flip-script-game-4-win