Spurs Tip Their Hats to the Thunder

By TOM SPOUSTA

Published: June 7, 2012OKLAHOMA CITY — The hug came as the clock struck zero and the roars and streamers inside the Chesapeake Energy Arena cascaded from the rafters. A week after they appeared invincible, time had run out on the San Antonio Spurs, and as Tim Duncan embraced Kevin Durant near midcourt, the Thunder’s future had officially begun.Oklahoma City won the West with a107-99 victory Wednesday night, dispatching San Antonio after spotting the Spurs a two-games-to-none lead in the conference finals. The Spurs were quick to acknowledge the pure talent and athleticism that floored them in four consecutive games.

“They just wanted it; they played more together as a team,” said the Spurs’ Stephen Jackson, who provided a lift with 23 points and made 6 for 7 3-point attempts after being moribund for most of the series. “I’m not going to make excuses. They beat us. They were the better team. We had our time. It’s just their time now.”

The Spurs looked as if they were fighting the inevitable even as they built 18-point leads in the first half and fended off several Thunder runs. After taking a 63-48 halftime lead, they scored only 36 points in the second half amid a torrent of up-tempo rushes by the Thunder that seemed to age the Spurs by the minute.

“Their talent was just impressive,” Duncan said. “I don’t think it was lack of effort on our part. I think we laid it out there and we gave all we could, but they were the better team.”

Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili had appeared ageless as San Antonio rolled to 20 consecutive victories, 10 in a row to start these playoffs. They showed desperate flashes of precision Wednesday night as they tried to force a Game 7 — Parker led with 29 points and 12 assists, Duncan scored 25 points and had 14 rebounds and Ginobili could only muster 10 points — but could not author one last stand.

“We can talk about it all we want, but the bottom line is they outplayed us when it mattered,” Duncan said.

Down, 103-99, with one minute left, clinging to a puncher’s chance, the Spurs reached deep and found nothing there. Flailing away with three chances on one possession, they whiffed on every one. Duncan made a clutch spin move for a sure lay-in, but Kendrick Perkins flew across the lane and rejected him; Jackson misfired on a 3-pointer; and Parker clanked a 3-pointer. The Thunder grabbed the rebound and started a fast break that ended in an emphatic Perkins dunk.

“As sad and disappointed as we are, you really have to think about it’s almost like a Hollywood script for O.K.C.,” Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said, ticking off a roll call of the Thunder’s run through the playoffs as a rite of passage of sorts.

The Dallas Mavericks, the defending N.B.A. champions, were swept; the Los Angeles Lakers were ousted in five games; the Spurs vanquished in six. Those three franchises have represented the Western Conference in the last 13 N.B.A. finals and accounted for 10 titles.

“And now they’re going to go and play either Boston or Miami, and that’ll be 11 of the last 13 championships,” Popovich continued. “I don’t know if anybody has ever had a run or gone through a playoff playing those kinds of teams. It’s incredible.”

Ginobili and the Spurs admitted throughout the series that the Thunder’s youth essentially trumped San Antonio’s experience. “We can’t have their legs, their energy,” Ginobili said. “We’re never going to jump as high or run as fast.”

Still, the Spurs recognized a mirror image of themselves, albeit a much younger one, even as they tried to extend their dynasty to five league titles since 1999.

“It’s hard not to be optimistic about the future of their franchise,” Ginobili said. “They are great. They have so much talent, and they are so athletic, and they’ve got a great front office.

“We know Sam Presti,” he continued, referring to the Thunder general manager and a former Spurs executive. “He’s a sharp guy, and he pulled this basically out of nothing. They’ve got a very bright future.”

Asked where the Spurs might be headed in the wake of their defeat, Ginobili grinned and said, “Same place we’ve been going the last eight years.

“We are fine. We just faced a great, young team. We had a great run, we just couldn’t beat these guys.”

Blame Parker for Spurs' struggles

SAN ANTONIO -- If the San Antonio Spurs don't look like the same powerhouse that won 20 consecutive games it's because they don't have the same Tony Parker who drove the streak. It's dangerous to reduce a group -- especially one as team-oriented a squad as the Spurs -- to an individual, but a successful team is a group of individuals playing well. And the Spurs' most important individual, their MVP of the regular season, isn't getting it done.

Parker is letting his teammates down, putting his coach in a bind and backing the Spurs up to the brink of elimination after the Oklahoma City Thunder won Game 5, 108-103.

So now the Spurs' 2-0 lead is gone, along with the memory of Parker's stellar, 34-point Game 2 and the regular season that had him in the discussion for 2011-12's top player. They've been replaced by a Thunder team that looks hungrier and smarter, and a version of Parker that committed five turnovers in the span of 16 minutes in Game 3, missed 10 of 15 shots in Game 4 and had as many turnovers as field goals (five) in Game 5, the swing game that projects the winner in 83.5 percent of the series that are tied 2-2.The Spurs are coming undone with turnovers. And Parker has totaled 11 over the past three games.

A convenient turning point in the series was Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks' decision to switch Thabo Sefolosha on Parker defensively. There has also been the amount of attention the Thunder's frontline has paid to Parker when he comes off screens.

The series shouldn't be reduced to such a neat summary. The star player is supposed to figure out a way to respond. If he can't overpower, he adjusts.

You know who has done a great job of that? Russell Westbrook. He can't simply blow by his man and get to the hoop against the Spurs, so he's looking for his teammates instead. Westbrook had 12 assists in Game 5. You can live with 9-for-24 shooting and six turnovers from your point guard when he has 12 assists. As the Thunder showed, you can even win on the road with that.

You can't say the same for Parker. He was never Magic Johnson when it comes to distributing the ball, but Parker has only four assists in each of the past three games. And with his point guard unable to lead the first unit, it forced Gregg Popovich to move Manu Ginobili into the starting lineup.

"It's an energy boost for the team," Popovich said of the change. "I mean, [Ginobili's] a great player, he's going to make plays, winning plays, and it might be a steal or an offensive board, a 3, whatever. He's a great player, so we wanted to get him more time."

Those are things he should be saying about Parker. Initially, the switch went the way Popovich planned, with the Spurs jumping to an early 11-4 lead and Ginobili scoring seven points in his first eight minutes. And still, the Thunder emerged from the first quarter up 26-21. Popovich had played his Z on Words With Friends and the Thunder used it to get even more points for themselves.

Ginobili gave everything Popovich could have asked of him. He scored 34 points, with 7 assists and 6 rebounds. But his start led to a predictable mauling by Oklahoma City in the bench scoring category: 40-22. It also produced some funky lineup combinations, during a time when a team shouldn't be tinkering with its lineups.

Parker isn't the only Spur suffering a letdown, of course. Tim Duncan is shooting 43 percent in the series, even after making seven of 10 shots in Game 5. Danny Green lost his starting spot to Ginobili and is shooting 27 percent, including bookend oh-fers in Games 1 and 5.Matt Bonner has been rendered useless by his defensive deficiencies and the way the Thunder have denied him 3-point shots. Tiago Splitter is too slow to keep up with the Thunder, and Oklahoma City is willing to foul him if and when the Spurs get in a groove while he's on the floor.

But if Parker was the one getting the most credit when things go right, he'll get a disproportionate share of the blame now. This season was about him taking on more responsibility. That means he's more responsible for things going south than he has been in the past. If you want more shots, you have to be willing to take more incoming shots.

These are the NBA playoffs, an event as star-oriented as Oscar night in Hollywood. Effusive praise (ask Kevin Durant) or excessive blame (ask LeBron James) comes with the season, like rising temperatures.

For the past five days, Parker has been saying he needs to be more aggressive. He hasn't done anything more than say it.

He has one last shot to come through, one opportunity to deliver basketball's ultimate test: a breakout performance in a road playoff game. If he does, the Spurs get an opportunity to continue their season with a Game 7 at home.

And if they instead become the 15th team to lose a series after leading 2-0, chances are we'll know whom to blame.

Serge Ibaka early, Kevin Durant late power Thunder by Spurs

Serge Ibaka got Game 4 started for the Oklahoma CityThunder in the Western Conference finals, but Durant finished it, scoring 16 points in a row in the fourth quarter to help beat the San Antonio Spurs 109-103 and even the series at 2-2.

In a five-minute stretch, Durant delivered the kind of scoring barrage his teammates have grown accustomed to but never seen on this stage. He did all of his work inside the three-point line, slashing the lane, dropping stepback jumpers and drawing contact only once, a Tony Parker foul followed by a free throw that seemed guaranteed to fall.

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Durant finished with 36 points, eight assists and six rebounds.

"It was great to see that, to be a witness," Thunder guardThabo Sefolosha said.

Durant, ever the teammate, chalked the performance up to his support.

"My teammates did a great job always encouraging me," Durant said. "The Spurs, their defense was so good early in the game. … In the fourth quarter, my teammates set great screens, had great passes."

Durant and the Thunder needed a scoring pick-me-up early and got it from an unlikely source. Ibaka, who scored a career-high 26 points and shot 11-for-11 from the field, nearly tied a 37-year-old record for perfect shooting in a playoff game. His field goal total was one shy of Larry McNeill's 12-for-12 night for the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1975.

"He didn't miss a shot? Wow!" Durant said. "He played phenomenal. That's what we need the rest of the series. … We rode him tonight, he had a phenomenal game."

What a turnaround in this series.

In two home games in three days, the Thunder rallied in a series that looked destined for an early end following two Spurs victories in San Antonio.

The Thunder had dealt the Spurs their first loss since April 11 on Thursday. Now, the series heads back to San Antonio for Game 5 on Monday (9 p.m. ET, TNT), all tied.

"That means everything," Thunder guard James Harden said of knotting the series. "We were down 0-2 and everyone thought it was over because they hadn't lost but we both won on our home courts. Now, we have to lock in and try to win a game."

Fourteen teams have rallied from down 2-0 to win a series, including the 2008 Spurs, who eventually lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the West finals. Eleven teams have rallied to win a series after losing their first two games on the road.

The Spurs were 12-4 in the regular season following a loss. The last time they lost two games in a row was April 9 against the Utah Jazz and April 11 against the Los Angeles Lakers.

"We have yet to play 48 minutes," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said of his team's inability to focus throughout the games. "The second quarter has been really bad for us. We've got to recover from that."

With San Antonio's loss, the road team has yet to win during the conference finals.

"We have to play as hard as we can, give ourselves a chance," Durant said of winning Game 5 at San Antonio.

Ibaka and fellow post players Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison — the Thunder's unlikely Big Three— combined to shoot 22-for-25 from the field, and the Thunder finished with 27 team assists, even improving on their uncharacteristically high output in a Game 3 victory (23).

"That's outstanding offensive basketball," said Thunder coach Scott Brooks, who credited Durant with becoming a better playmaker. "That's through the work he puts in with our staff. He comes to practice every day trying to figure out ways to improve his game."

Perkins carried Oklahoma City's offense early, putting up nine points and six rebounds in the first quarter alone. He finished with 15 points and nine rebounds — after entering with just 12 points in the series. The Thunder's more usual scorers, Durant, Russell Westbrook and Harden, were 1-for-9 in the first quarter.

"Their three bigs … they were great passing the ball. They were the difference in the game," said Spurs forward Tim Duncan, coming back from an 11-point, two-rebound Game 3 with 21 points and eight rebounds.

"They were making some unexpected shots. At the same time they were cutting to the basket and making dunks."

The Spurs flirted with a comeback for three quarters, getting as close as two points late in the third quarter after trailing by as many as 15 points.

"We shouldn't get any credit for playing hard. … You're supposed to play hard," Spurs guard Stephen Jackson. "I've said before, you're scared, go to church on Sunday."

Then Durant took over. His performance in the fourth quarter, in a five-minute span, comes after shooting 1-for-5 combined in the fourth quarter of the first three games.

"Kevin, in the fourth quarter, he was unbelievable," Duncan said.

At this stage last season, the Thunder were down 3-1 to the eventual NBA championDallas Mavericks. Saturday's win means Oklahoma City is as close as its ever been to hosting an NBA finals.

The Spurs want back, too, for a shot at the franchise's fifth NBA championship. But first comes Game 5.

"We earned ourselves to have the possibility of home-court advantage. Hopefully, we use it," Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said of returning to San Antonio. "We played a bad Game 3. Today was a little better. … But they shot 56%. We are not a team that can afford to have that type of defensive performance."

Serge Ibaka early, Kevin Durant late power Thunder by Spurs

OKLAHOMA CITY – Leave it to Kevin Durant to top a performance in which a teammate scored a career-high 26 points and didn't miss a shot.Serge Ibaka got Game 4 started for the Oklahoma CityThunder in the Western Conference finals, but Durant finished it, scoring 16 points in a row in the fourth quarter to help beat the San Antonio Spurs 109-103 and even the series at 2-2.

In a five-minute stretch, Durant delivered the kind of scoring barrage his teammates have grown accustomed to but never seen on this stage. He did all of his work inside the three-point line, slashing the lane, dropping stepback jumpers and drawing contact only once, a Tony Parker foul followed by a free throw that seemed guaranteed to fall.

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Durant finished with 36 points, eight assists and six rebounds.

"It was great to see that, to be a witness," Thunder guardThabo Sefolosha said.

Durant, ever the teammate, chalked the performance up to his support.

"My teammates did a great job always encouraging me," Durant said. "The Spurs, their defense was so good early in the game. … In the fourth quarter, my teammates set great screens, had great passes."

Durant and the Thunder needed a scoring pick-me-up early and got it from an unlikely source. Ibaka, who scored a career-high 26 points and shot 11-for-11 from the field, nearly tied a 37-year-old record for perfect shooting in a playoff game. His field goal total was one shy of Larry McNeill's 12-for-12 night for the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1975.

"He didn't miss a shot? Wow!" Durant said. "He played phenomenal. That's what we need the rest of the series. … We rode him tonight, he had a phenomenal game."

What a turnaround in this series.

In two home games in three days, the Thunder rallied in a series that looked destined for an early end following two Spurs victories in San Antonio.

The Thunder had dealt the Spurs their first loss since April 11 on Thursday. Now, the series heads back to San Antonio for Game 5 on Monday (9 p.m. ET, TNT), all tied.

"That means everything," Thunder guard James Harden said of knotting the series. "We were down 0-2 and everyone thought it was over because they hadn't lost but we both won on our home courts. Now, we have to lock in and try to win a game."

Fourteen teams have rallied from down 2-0 to win a series, including the 2008 Spurs, who eventually lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the West finals. Eleven teams have rallied to win a series after losing their first two games on the road.

The Spurs were 12-4 in the regular season following a loss. The last time they lost two games in a row was April 9 against the Utah Jazz and April 11 against the Los Angeles Lakers.

"We have yet to play 48 minutes," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said of his team's inability to focus throughout the games. "The second quarter has been really bad for us. We've got to recover from that."

With San Antonio's loss, the road team has yet to win during the conference finals.

"We have to play as hard as we can, give ourselves a chance," Durant said of winning Game 5 at San Antonio.

Ibaka and fellow post players Kendrick Perkins and Nick Collison — the Thunder's unlikely Big Three— combined to shoot 22-for-25 from the field, and the Thunder finished with 27 team assists, even improving on their uncharacteristically high output in a Game 3 victory (23).

"That's outstanding offensive basketball," said Thunder coach Scott Brooks, who credited Durant with becoming a better playmaker. "That's through the work he puts in with our staff. He comes to practice every day trying to figure out ways to improve his game."

Perkins carried Oklahoma City's offense early, putting up nine points and six rebounds in the first quarter alone. He finished with 15 points and nine rebounds — after entering with just 12 points in the series. The Thunder's more usual scorers, Durant, Russell Westbrook and Harden, were 1-for-9 in the first quarter.

"Their three bigs … they were great passing the ball. They were the difference in the game," said Spurs forward Tim Duncan, coming back from an 11-point, two-rebound Game 3 with 21 points and eight rebounds.

"They were making some unexpected shots. At the same time they were cutting to the basket and making dunks."

The Spurs flirted with a comeback for three quarters, getting as close as two points late in the third quarter after trailing by as many as 15 points.

"We shouldn't get any credit for playing hard. … You're supposed to play hard," Spurs guard Stephen Jackson. "I've said before, you're scared, go to church on Sunday."

Then Durant took over. His performance in the fourth quarter, in a five-minute span, comes after shooting 1-for-5 combined in the fourth quarter of the first three games.

"Kevin, in the fourth quarter, he was unbelievable," Duncan said.

At this stage last season, the Thunder were down 3-1 to the eventual NBA championDallas Mavericks. Saturday's win means Oklahoma City is as close as its ever been to hosting an NBA finals.

The Spurs want back, too, for a shot at the franchise's fifth NBA championship. But first comes Game 5.

"We earned ourselves to have the possibility of home-court advantage. Hopefully, we use it," Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said of returning to San Antonio. "We played a bad Game 3. Today was a little better. … But they shot 56%. We are not a team that can afford to have that type of defensive performance."

Thunder paint Spurs into corner in Game 3

The San Antonio Spurs may have been due for a loss, but not this kind of loss. 

The winners of 20 straight contests, San Antonio lost in grand fashion Thursday night to theOklahoma City Thunder, falling 102-82. It was just the Spurs' third loss this season by 20 points or more, and it was their lowest offensive output in the playoffs. 

The Thunder, who now trail 2-1 in the Western Conference Finals, dominated in virtually every way in Game 3, but their advantage in the paint proved to be the difference. Oklahoma City outscored the conference’s top seed 44-24 in the lane. Nearly half of the Thunder’s shots came in the painted area, and they made 52.4 percent of those attempts. Inside of 5 feet, the Thunder not only excelled offensively but also locked down the opponent. They scored 38 points (19-33 FG) from that distance Thursday night, holding the Spurs to a playoff-low 22 points on 11-of-20 from the field. 

Pressure defense was also a key for the Thunder. They had 14 steals, including six by G Thabo Sefolosha, and San Antonio finished with 21 turnovers. That is the most turnovers by the Spurs in a playoff game since 2007, when they committed 23 against the Jazz in a win. 

Those turnovers allowed Oklahoma City to get out and run. The West’s second seed outscored the Spurs 23-9 in transition, converting 10 of their 14 field goal attempts. San Antonio managed only two buckets in transition. 

In the half court, the Thunder were able to take away one of the Spurs’ main weapons: the pick-and-roll. San Antonio scored 30 points off pick-and-roll plays in each of the first two games of the series, but the team was held to only 12 points on such plays in Game 3. 

Tim Duncan finished with 11 points on 5-of-15 shooting. He did set a milestone by passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most blocks in playoff history (478), but it comes with a caveat: Blocks were not an official stat until 1973-74, Abdul-Jabbar’s fifth NBA season. 

The Thunder were able to triumph despite star G Russell Westbrook scoring just 10 points. Westbrook contributed nine assists and four steals, though, and Oklahoma City outscored the Spurs by 29 points when he was on the court. Westbrook averaged 22.0 points in losses in Games 1 and 2. 

While Kevin Durant poured in 22, it was a pair of unlikely players that provided the punch for Oklahoma City. Sefolosha and Serge Ibaka combined for 33 points in Game 3; they had just 22 points total in the first two games of the series. 

If the Thunder continue to control the interior and transition game, they could give the Spurs fits. Tonight’s effort proved that the Thunder are very much alive in this series.