The Thunder don't have enough to beat the Spurs, even with Durant and Westbrook
The Oklahoma City Thunder have two of the best players in the NBA, Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant, both of whom are at the height of their powers this postseason.
In this star-driven NBA, having two out-and-out superstars who play well together is an advantage that few teams can boast. The Thunder should be title contenders. They should be in the same class as the Cavaliers, the Warriors, and the Spurs. The Thunder should be an elite team.
But they're not, because Oklahoma City doesn't have the bench and it doesn't have the coaching necessary to compete for titles. That truth had been developing for months, but it was crystallized Friday night in the Thunder's Game 3 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the teams' Western Conference Semifinal series.
The Thunder needed everything they could get from their superstars in Game 3, and to their credit, they did their best to deliver. But at a certain point, two men can only do so much — especially against a historically great Spurs team.
Especially when they're not getting any offensive help outside of a fluky 5-of-6 shooting night from behind the arc from Serge Ibaka (a 32 percent 3-point shooter.)
Especially when they have a coach who isn't coaching in the fourth quarter of a game.
The Thunders' prodigious star power can win the first 43 minutes, maybe even the first 45 or 46 minutes of a game, but when it comes down to the final two minutes of the contest, it's clear that the Thunder don't have what it takes, and it's not Westbrook and Durant's fault.
On Friday, the Thunder entered the final five minutes with a two-point lead and an enthused crowd, but, as has been the problem for the Thunder all season, the team failed in crunch time.
The Thunder was the worst of the teams that qualified for the playoffs in "crunch time" this season, as the only team of that ilk that posted a net-negative rating in the final five minutes with the score within five points.
How is that possible? You saw exactly how Friday night.
In crunch time of Game 3, Westbrook and Durant had a combined usage of 92.5 percent. The only non-superstar possession was an aimless "play" in the final seconds, in which the Thunder, despite being down by four, spent 14 seconds to get an off-balance Dion Waiters bank shot (which he made.)
That 14-second possession was a perfect microcosm of coach Billy Donovan's late-game ideology — if you can call it that.
The knock on former Thunder coach Scott Brooks was that his teams' offenses would fall apart late in games. Ball movement would stop and the Thunder would alternate possessions of heroball.
Nothing has changed under Donovan. It might have gotten worse.
Not only did the Thunder fail to register an assist in the final five minutes of the game (and only one in the final 7:15 of the contest) — an obvious indication of no ball movement — but also, Donovan was toyed with by his counterpart on the Spurs bench, Gregg Popovich.
Much was made after Game 3 about the number of shots that Westbrook took Friday night compared to Durant, and the disparity between Westbrook (31 shots) and Durant (18) was exactly what the Spurs wanted. San Antonio double-teamed and overloaded Durant's side of the court for most of Game 3, but went all in on denying Durant late in the fourth quarter.
It's on Donovan to call plays to get Durant the ball and open looks at the hoop, or to make the Spurs pay for putting too much attention on one player by setting up Westbrook and the other three Oklahoma City players on the court to score on a man (or two) advantage.
Neither happened. Either Donovan doesn't recognize his responsibility or he's denying it because of the low quality of the Thunder's other offensive players. It's probably a combination of both factors.
Either way, with this top-heavy roster and a coach who is sporting a deer-in-the-headlights look, you might as well write the Thunder off in this series.
What happens after the inevitable comes to fruition — say in July, when free agency starts — is anyone's guess.
