Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images
Seeing Chicago and the Lakers lose their first games at home had to make you feel at least a little better, didn’t it? No way the Bulls, Lakers and Thunder ALL lose their second-round series, right?
But it seems likely that at least one of the three will go down. Let’s just hope the Thunder isn’t that team.
In the first round, only the Lakers won their series after losing the first game at home while the Spurs and Magic couldn’t recover. That’s not a great recent sign for Oklahoma City, especially because it was Memphis that did in San Antonio. But it shows, as if you didn’t know already, that an opening loss at home is not necessarily a death knell.
If the Thunder has shown us anything this year, it’s that the team is resilient. The few back-to-back losses on the year provide some evidence, as does the stellar record in close games, the ability to go on a tear following a trade that sent away a popular teammate, late-season road wins in Miami and Los Angeles and particularly the Game 5 comeback. With the proper mindset, the Game 1 loss in this series could simply be viewed as an opportunity to rise (together … couldn’t help myself) to another challenge.
Grasping at straws? Maybe. But the idea that the Thunder’s season is already teetering even before Game 2 has tipped off is ridiculous. It was certainly disappointing from the vantage point of DT readers and Thunder fans at large, but allow me to bring back up a quote I borrowed from Gregg Easterbrook for a Nov. 1 column I wrote after the Jazz blew out the Thunder early in the season: Don’t panic. There will be plenty of time for that later. (In this case, the excruciatingly long three-day layoff between Games 2 and 3.)
In fact, if OKC can manage to win tonight and then steal Game 3 in Memphis, the Grizzlies will face an uphill climb for the first time this postseason. We haven’t yet seen how this incarnation of the Griz would react to trailing in a series, but at least with last year’s Thunder team we saw they showed little fear at a 2-0 deficit against the Lakers (that admittedly was cured by a two home games, not two games in a rowdy FedEx Forum).
It’s time, right now, for all of those Thunderisms like “It’s a process” and “We’re growing as a team and as individuals” to prove to be more than just boring canned quotes. If the Thunder is growing as a team and as an individuals, then it should come out determined and get a win in front of the home crowd. If this is a process, then surely part of the process is overcoming a deficit in a postseason series in which you have home court advantage.
The only thing fans can do, other than continue to fret, is to make that home court advantage real. For most of Game 5 of the Nuggets series and Game 1 on Sunday, the crowd let the visitors’ lead get inside their heads. There was desperation, worry and tension in the air. That may be unavoidable to some extent when the Thunder digs itself a rather sizable hole, but if there was ever a night for the crowd to refuse to let itself get out of the game, this would be it.
@props
I kind of agree, but I have to say that I am pretty tired of the XL shirts. Beggars can't be choosers, but can we get a Medium in the mix? I know it isn't a fashion contest, but have we just conceded to the fact that some people are obese? I'd be happy with an all Medium night.
Did you happen to go to the LA games during the season last year? Now that crowd could've been confused with LA. The Laker support in the center was sickening!
Either way, I am just flat out amazed at all of the infants and toddlers I see at 8:30 playoff games. I'm not a parent, but that seems like a bad decision.
@Taz-Maniac
This
On a more positive note, we played 15 Sunday games throughout the regular season. We lost 60% of those games, but only once - the first Sunday game of the season (Oct 31) did we loose the next game after that (to the Clippers - Nov 3)!
For whatever reason we don't play well on Sunday or games with early starts - Loss to Miami on Jan 30 12pm start, and LAL 1:30pm start. In fact the only early start that I can recall them winning since they have been here was on MLK day against the Hawks in 2010.
So lets get this done in six or less - Game 7 is on a Sunday.....
@Brian
Agreed! I've been to every playoff game and I thought for one of the first times the crowd (ref to Sun game) was actually willing the players to get in sync and pull it together. Of course there were lulls, but that's nerves for ya. I had to go buy a $8 piece of cake so i could nervous eat during the 3rd. Guess who won't be visiting the dessert cart tonight?
well hopefully not, anyway.
@Brian
+1
@Mark!
because the crowd is always the best when I'm there, and always the worst when I am not.
The crowd has been good throughout. You guys are picky. It's hard for the crowd to be consistently anything when every 3 seconds there's a different sounder, different contest, different dude yelling at us. The crowd has been great. Why even bother to pick nits over which night was the worst?
@Vince
Obviously game 5 against Denver was the worst, I didn't go to that one.
OKC will never be confused with L.A. Did anyone notice that they gave out free matching shirts, but maybe half of the arena was willing to wear the shirts?
@Grolgar
Uh, no. The Game 1 crowd was pretty good, considering the early start time and the like. The Game 5 crowd vs Denver was the worst of the playoffs, by far. (I've been to each game, fwiw).
@Grolgar
The crowd was on the edge of its seat most of the night begging the Thunder to get us back in it but when anything started to look like it might go our way, we would 1) throw the ball away 2) get questionable foul called on us 3) refs would not call the same foul on the Grizz 4) we would miss at the rim for what seemed like a million times 5) they would get the rebound on all lose balls. 6) They would hit every damn shot even the fade away impossible ones.
The turn out was great to that game considering the bad weather on such a dreary day, I feel its bad to blame the fans, we badly wanted them to win.
Royce, you see ESPN.com has a special on "The Wire."
I too love this article! Go Thunder!!!
@Grolgar
I agree with what Royce said in the recap:
"The crowd absolutely begged the Thunder to get back in the game. The energy was there from the fans, but the team couldn’t respond. A number of times the ball just didn’t seem to bounce the Thunder’s way or a suspect call sucked the energy right out of the comeback."
*noise
The crowd was good when we were making runs, but good crowds are consistently good when your team is not making a run. Ours was not good on the latter. I was very disappointed. I think that we've already moved on to a regular NBA fan base as far as crowd noice is concerned. Reminds me of OU football fans... which coincidentally makes up a lot of the Thunder fanbase.
Show up and play D and we win tonight.
@MartzMimic
That was the first Thunder game I've been to where the whole arena booed the refs on their way out at halftime. Also, I think Joey Crawford knows what I think of him.
The crowd was plenty loud whenever the Thunder started a run. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot else to scream about?
I wasn't all doom and gloom immediately after the loss, and I'm still not. But you can't lay anything about Sunday off on the crowd.
@bouzi4real
really? I mean it was pretty bad early, but I thought the crowd got pretty rowdy after the slow start
lol the crowd was so pitiful last sunday, i thought our boys where playing in LA.
How has nobody commented on this yet? Good article, Patrick.
I'm completely with you on the crowd being loud tonight-- we gotta be loud all night, consistently. We have to win this game. And we need to make a difference as a crowd.