I'm going to be a little more philosophical about the loss.
I'm very disappointed about the loss and the calls irked me
However,
In the midst of the Spurs win streak- if you had to design a team to beat them what would you need?
A team with great scorers to take advantage of a good but not great defense
Thunder has that in spades
An athletic team that can switch and interrupt passing lanes
ok the Thunder have that.
I just did not think they would be smart enough at this stage
I think Pop deserves credit for creating a championship contending team with a somewhat flawed roster. As TIMVP pointed out no other championship team resembles the Spurs. Most have several stars in their prime.
I was proud of how hard they played last night.
yea there were a lot of horrible calls down the stretch but give the Thunder credit, they kicked the Spurs ass.
i'm proud of this team too because after last year and even most of this year everyone counted them out. they weren't supposed to get this far and they did, just too bad they couldn't finish.
Very good post, thanks
I feel the same way, I really thought the Spurs had it in the bag after they went up 2-0. I thought they would lose 1 or 2 games in the series, 2 only if they lost game 4, but I thought they would respond and close out in San Antonio. I'm really let down, this is probably the biggest choke in NBA history. The Spurs were on one of the best win streaks EVER at the end of the regular season and carrying into the playoffs, 10-0 in their first 10 playoff games. The Thunder made good adjustments and had more energy, and the Spurs did the opposite.
Of course I'm just a nobody fan and will always be received negatively with this opinion, expecting the players to continue to perform like they had been, but I am let down. They should have won this series. They didn't carry on like a veteran ball club and turned the series over, literally and figuratively.
I think a big reason for what has been happening, is yes, you can say too many role players, who the Spurs need at this stage (Manu, Tim way past prime), are mentally weak. Outside the Big 3, Leonard, and Jackson, they all folded when hit the fan.
Some of the other contenders and champions didn't have this problem. Look at OKC's team, they're a confident bunch, every single player who played for them in this series. Neal, Bonner, Splitter, Green, and stretching back to previous years with RJ, they simply are not of the same mold. The Spurs role players have been great when there's no adversity, when the team is steamrolling opponents left and right because they're all collectively playing well. Once they go cold a little bit and the other team responds well, they crumble and it's contagious.
Every team that doesn't win a le this year choked.
That's the conundrum the Spurs' front office faces when they scout for players to fit into their system. Players have to be pliable, and many of the role players on the Thunder are not pliable. They are who they are, and they either work in your system or they destroy it. When you bring in pliable players, you bring in guys who are willing and emotionally able to take a back seat to coaching wants and needs, but that also means no egos. Egos equal "nasty" in many instances, so you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Players who have gotten over themselves have nothing to prove, and are likely to be soft at moments you need them the most. There are rare instances where sheer talent and hidden ego exists like in Tim, Manu and Tony, but for role guys like Diaw and Splitter, no ego means no drive.
Good job guys. We have a of a pg in Tony Parker. Very disappoint in the loss but we had a great season.
No, every team that was up 2-0 in the conference finals with home court advantage choked. That's 1, possibly 2 teams. Everyone was predicting Spurs-Heat.
The other teams were simply not good enough to be in the conversation. That's not choking.
So you were all wrong. I wasn't predicting that, so I wasn't wrong.
The Spurs aren't good enough to be in the conversation, obviously, just as the Thunder weren't last year when they lost to an overpowering team in the Mavs. That's the same Thunder that handily defeated the team that kicked our asses in the opening round.
When a team like the Thunder plays as well as they do, it can be mistaken for a choke by the opponent. That's not what it was. It will not be seen that way in the future. People are just sore about it now.
The 10 game playoff win streak was misleading. We beat the Jazz and the Clippers. We didn't sweep the Mavs and the Lakers. The Thunder were 1 game shy of doing just that.
How can you say watching the Spurs go up 2-0 and then lose the rest of their games of the season is satisfying? Watching the once productive role players bring nothing to the table, except Jackson?
I'm with killakobe on this one, many of you have weak expectations and are content with being regular season champs.
You should become a Laker fan else you will be in for a long series of disappointments.
I agree with your main points, and I never once thought the Spurs were guaranteed to win this series before it began. I knew it would be a tough, tough series. But once they went up 2-0, it changed things. All the Spurs needed to do was win 1 game out of 2 away. That's it. The shift to OKC changed the whole series, there was no coming back from that.
I think they were good enough to be in the conversation, they were up 2-0 in the WCF. They were supposed to be the veteran team that executed well, but they turned the ball over way too much and that costed them 2 very pivotal games, 3 and 5. Game 3 was a blow out but the Spurs were right there in games 5 and 6, and unfortunately both times the Thunder were able to close.
You are seriously underrating the Spurs when you say they weren't in the conversation, clearly they were, being up 2-0, and being right there in 2 crucial games where the refs and poor decisions were costly.
That's silly. Teams like Utah played pretty close to their abilities and it was quite clear their best wasn't good enough. Spurs best got them a 2-0 lead, even with OKC playing well (88 points from their big 3).
Here we go with dpgs "basketball opinions" again. Seriously, the only spur fan with room to to talk is DMC, the rest of you were wrong bout them spurs
yeah, that's not what I said.
I've run out of juice.
... But I'll ALWAYS be proud of My Spurs.
if you made a prediction that the spurs would go all the way to the WCF at the beginning of the season, you would have been laughed out of the room. it was a good fight.
Obviously most of us Laker fans are arrogant pricks, I get that. And many of you, are trying to maintain that small market mentality of: "well nobody expected us to do this well not even OUR fans ...so I am proud" That is sweet, but you guys are fans of a 4x champs now. Duncan is one of the 10 greatest players to lace them up and he has 2 HOF guards at his side even if he has lost a step or two. You should EXPECT to win after having the best and 2nd best records in the NBA the past two seasons. It's not like the Spurs core has not won before, like OKC. I would think the Spurs FO has raised the bar and the expectations for it's fans. I know it has been almost 5 years since your last le, but Alvarez and DPG are right. Why should they not be dissapointed in this series and how does it not taint the season a bit?! Sure you got to enjoy ALL of those wins, just like the Pats fans enjoyed all those wins when they went 18-0. But when you lose the chance at the le it's bitter-sweet and definitely more bitter than sweet. I know, I have been there. I felt the same way in 2008 and that hurt worse because it was Boston.
Spurs to me, are NOT Boston. Boston fans should be proud because pushing Lebron and his Lebronaires to 7 games, for that old and gimoy team is them playing WAY ABOVE their heads. Spurs losing to OKC after being up 2-0 is the spurs playing under theirs ...
This team did very well, I hope we're able to keep most of our pieces for the next year or two. We have lots of players on this team that can improve both in the mental and physical aspect of the game and will benefit from this run.
Also, turnovers should reduce next year in similar pressure-packed situations assuming we can keep the same core together.
One of the biggest reasons it has been hard for Spurs fans to accept defeat this year is that the Spurs in the playoffs have had health. In the past, they have been able to point to someone's injury to blame.
Game six is available on itunes if you are brave enough to watch it again. $1.99 for the standard version, $2.99 for the HD version.
One of the greatest halves of Spurs basketball I have ever seen and then one of the most heartbreaking and frustrating conclusions to a game.
lol slayermin
Bitter end to an incredible season. I still think we have a window of two seasons to contend, but it's unlikely we're as good as this again. Never know though - one big signing and everything changes. Who would've thought we'd be where we are right now when the season started and we had RJ's albatross weighing us down? Who would've thought we'd have Jax back, and Diaw (who you know has long been a fave of mine). Anything can happen, as we just witnessed!
That's a mature at ude. Sports, like life, is actually about the journey, not the ending.
And I think they pretty much gave game 3 away and concentrated on game 4. If Durant hadn't hit 16 in the 4th, and Ibaka/Perkins/Collison hadn't hit 22/25, we'd have won the series in 5. As it was, game 4 turned out to be the game OKC needed to believe in themselves and flip the switch to greatness, bugger it all!
Absolutely. OKC should have won game 1 (up 9 entering the 4th), could have won game 2. They were the more talented squad with a higher ceiling, but didn't truly play as a team until game 4. The moment they started doing that we were in trouble.
88 from their Big 3 is not OKC playing well. OKC playing well is sharing the ball and committing on D, and getting it to Durant and Harden when the game is on the line, the way they did in games 4-6. 88 from their Big 3 is playing into the other team's plan.
The key to this series was OKC playing like a team. We had to hope they wouldn't, that Westbrook would keep making bad 4th Q decisions, etc. Unfortunately, OKC figured out the fact that they couldn't beat the Spurs without contributions from the supporting cast in game 4, and Ibaka/Perkins played the games of their lives which fed the entire team's confidence, their Big 3 started to trust their team-mates, and here we are in purgatory. Sad for us, but we witnessed the birth of a great team. I think these guys will win at least 3 rings together, they are that good and only going to get better.
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