Wanting to win and not caring if you lose are two very different things. Pop gave the starters their chance, but to be within 10 with a few minutes to play and not have a single starter on the floor indicates that this wasn't a game Pop wanted to win all that badly. The only advantage to winning would have been all but locking up the No. 1 seed, something the Spurs still have a very good shot at doing. Pop said it in a timeout: he doesn't care about winning or losing as long as the team plays the game right. The Thunder are in the Spurs' players heads, they get away with a lot of physicality and it knocks this team out of its rhythm. OKC depends HEAVILY on being able to force up-tempo play to get KD and other shooters pull-up opportunities in transition. Those come from turnovers, and the Thunder get away with murder in forcing them.
This game was not about wanting to win. Pop doesn't care about the streak, or about beating any one opponent in the regular season. He knows that this is a team the Spurs are likely to have to get through if they're going to return to the Finals, and he trotted out a few different rotations against the Thunder's full strength squad to 1) see how the players maintained composure and ran their sets and 2) to introduce the bench to the kind of maniacal play they'll be up against in the WCF, if both teams get there. More than anything, this is a wakeup call. A little taste of mortality for a team that has run roughshod over everyone else in 2014.
You can talk about how they swept the Spurs this season, or how it appears the Thunder have this team's number. Maybe they do, but Westbrick and his pack of goons can pound their chest over regular season wins all they want. If things go the way they seem to be going, they'll have to win 4 out of 7 against Pop and the Spurs without HCA for the second time in three years, and last night they showed us their entire hand.
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