OKC Thunders Up Series To 2-2

Last night's game 4 between Oklahoma City and San Antonio is not getting the credit it deserved this morning. The heavyweight Western Conference series just delivered the best game we saw so far. It's not getting the credit it deserved, maybe that's just because it is a Sunday and maybe on Monday it will receive it's due credit, maybe.

The Spurs played as the Spurs usually do, smart & conservative basketball but they fell behind too early and by too much. The Spurs seemed to get back into the game slowly in the 2nd half but every time it seemed like San Antonio may make it a one possession game, Kevin Durant would make a bucket and dash the hopes of the Spurs and their fans.

Kevin Durant had one of those career defining games. A game early in his career that we will bring up for years to come and remember when he retires years from now. Last nights performance was similar to LeBron James Game 5 performance in the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals against the Detroit Pistons. In that game LeBron James finished with 48 points while scoring the final 25 points and 29 of the final 30 points overall to propel the Cavs to a defining double OT Game 5 win over the Pistons. While Durant's game, in my opinion, wasn't as impressive has LeBron's, it is similar in the fact that both Durant and James came through in the end for their teams at a young age, in a big series, and provided themselves with a young career defining performance. Durant finished with 36 points, while scoring 18 of those points in the final 7 minutes of the game and for 5 minutes of that span, Durant scored 16 points and was the only player on the Thunder to make a bucket, leading his team to tie the Spurs at 2-2 heading back to San Antonio in this epic Western Conference Finals.

Another great performance was by Thunder F Serge Ibaka, who was literally perfect from the field. Ibaka's 11-for-11 performance helped OKC's "Other Big 3", which includes Nick Collison and Kendrick Perkins, go 22-25 from the field which made up for Westbrook and Harden's awful 6-23 performance from the field. OKC took a little page out of the Spurs playbook by overcoming 2 of their starts terrible play by getting easy baskets by passing, driving, screening, kicking, and most importantly, hitting their open shots.

San Antonio was weird as it possibly sounds, played a great game and executed their gameplan to almost perfection. The pressure and doubles the Spurs put on Harden and Westbrook obviously bothered them, but not so much Durant. The Spurs gameplan was to make players outside of OKC's Big 3 make shots which somewhat worked, they took care of 2 of the 3 but the problem was only only Durant but when the Thunder's role plays got opportunities, they made their impact. San Antonio was just banking on the fact that the Thunder's role players couldn't make their open shots. Last night's Game 4 makes consecutive games that the Spurs got burned by someone outside of the Thunder's Big 3, in Game 3 it was Sefolosha and in Game 4 it was Ibaka with even more fire brought by Collison and Perkins.

I'm sticking by my earlier prediction that the team with home-court advantage will win the Series, aka the Spurs, but only time will tell. I just don't think the Thunder are beating the Spurs in San Antonio and vice-versa. This Western Conference Finals of the NBA's heavyweights is very much delivery for myself and I hope it is delivering for you also, if not, then maybe Kevin Durant can deliver another performance like last night for you.