Monday Bolts – 6.18.12

Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com: “Looking back on the game, that fourth foul on Durant broke the Thunder’s back. Durant was forced to sit on the bench for the final six minutes of the third quarter and watch their seven-point lead evaporate. They couldn’t recover from that, not when James Harden seemingly forgot how to play basketball.”

Matt Moore of CBSSports.com: “Durant’s become a phenomenal defender this season. He is one of the best in the league (very loosely defined) at this point. But while there’s no good matchup for LeBron James, the Thunder can live with James abusing other members of the Thunder, and those other members are doing the best job. It’s not as dramatic, it’s not as iconic. But it’s time for the Thunder to help Kevin Durant be the best he can be. And that means letting him focus on offense. It’s not working. Time for something different. Because if the Thunder don’t find a way to at least make life difficult for James, they’ll be climbing out of too deep a hole.”

Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com: “There are certain teams who can subsist without their two most prolific offensive players — but the Thunder aren’t one of them. The combined usage of Westbrook and Durant in the regular season totaled 59.2 percent of possessions. Some teams have a system that can accommodate different pieces in well-defined roles. When the Spurs were playing their best basketball during their winning streak, they could throw just about anyone into the mix, and that player could acclimate to the flow of the offense seamlessly. But aside from the magical glastnost of their conference finals victories over the Spurs — and much of that fluidity was predicated on the presence of Durant and Westbrook — the Thunder are a team reliant on shot creation to score. Remove shot creators from an offense dependent on them, and what are you left with?”

Well, at least we know why the Thunder lost Game 2.

J.A. Adande of ESPN.com: “Westbrook-bashers will have much more ammunition from this game (in which he missed 10 of 18 shots and had only four assists) than Game 2, when the mercurial point guard occupied the scrutiny that’s usually reserved for LeBron. It’s almost as if someone has to pay a penance for losing in the Finals, and Westbrook may be the one targeted after missing an open 3-pointer and then a pass on Oklahoma City’s final two possessions. But it can’t be both ways for the second-guessers. Can’t blame both his time on the bench in the third and his time on the court in the fourth for the Thunder’s loss. In reality, they went down as a team. A team without many reps at closing out a Finals game.”

The Thunder could’ve used a little more wild Russell in Game 3.

Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post with the latest dumbest column ever submission: “Given a choice between Ty Lawson of the Nuggets and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook, you could bet 29 of 30 general managers would pick the point guard stealing shots from Kevin Durant at the NBA Finals. They would be wrong. Lawson is going to be the biggest thing under 6 feet tall in this league. Westbrook has a great future as a coach killer.”

Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com: “It’s a rigged game, but usually it’s a fair game. The referees are so bad, so affected by the star power in front of them, that the calls usually even out. Both teams tend to have stars, so both teams tend to get atrocious calls on their behalf. Kobe Bryant probably owes 1,000 of his 29,484 career points — roughly 12 percent of his made free throws — to generous calls, the kind of calls you get when you’re Kobe Bryant, but not when you’re Thabo Sefolosha. This is the way of the NBA: Officials are incompetent, but they’re so incompetent that neither team gets an edge.”

Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “The Thunder’s ultimate undoing, however, came in waves of incompetence and anxiety in the fourth. Their downfall started innocently enough with Chris Bosh’s block of Durant’s driving jumper, which was followed by a missed 3-pointer by Durant and two straight turnovers by James Harden. Then came the three-point play by James, who blew up Durant on his way to the basket to draw the and-one. Block, charge, whatever. The Thunder’s mistakes ensured that James could simply do what he does best — run the floor and overpower everyone in his path. Suddenly, a one-point game had become an 84-77 lead for the Heat with 3:44 left.”

Berry Tramel: “Bad decisions. Panic-induced play. Who were those masked men? What happened to the Boys of Poise who belied their age? What happened to the ahead-of-its-time Thunder team that threatened to win an NBA championship long before its appointed time?”

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop on James Harden: “Maybe Harden will have big scoring runs in the Finals. Or maybe he will, instead, expend a lot of that energy at the other end of the court. If he figures out a way to do both in his first time on basketball’s biggest stage, that would be remarkable — and exactly the kind of thing the Thunder need to win a series they now trail.”

Metta World Peace on James Harden: “No brain All beard.”

Chris Mannix of SI.com: “The NBA’s reigning Sixth Man award winner struggled for the second time this series, scoring just nine points (on 2-of-10 shooting) while missing on all four of his three-point attempts. Derek Fisher (nine points) picked up some of the slack, chipping in with some intelligent defense. But Harden is a key cog in Oklahoma City’s offensive system. When he is in the game, he is both playmaker and scorer, counted on to take some of the ball handling duties from Russell Westbrook as well as create space with his shooting. Harden reportedly was not happy with how many minutes he played in Game 1; if there is any carryover from that issue, he must get past it, quickly, before Oklahoma City digs itself too deep a hole to climb out of.”

Shoals of GQ: “Maybe that’s the trick: The Thunder came in favored and if not invincible, they certainly inspired a confidence the Heat never could, not even after those last two games against Boston. Maybe the problem isn’t some lazy veterans versus youngsters bullshit but rather, a team whose attitude and insurgent power has always been its greatest asset. OKC needs to keep its head down, mix things up, and continue to go for broke.”

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: “Scott Brooks is a pedestrian coach whose own organization isn’t sure how long of a contract extension, nor how rich, it wants to reward him at season’s end. Before Sunday night, Durant was playing the part of Dirk Nowitzki, but the rest of these Thunder are struggling to belong. The Thunder made a mere 15 of 24 free throws, and that speaks to poise, to the moment becoming too big, too burdened. If Brooks has to bench his All-Star guard, Russell Westbrook, for the final five minutes of a third quarter in the Finals, are the Thunder ready to be champions?”

Nick Collison and Royal Ivey with an idea.

David Aldridge of NBA.com: “Come to think of it, that is what felled the Bulls at long last, with Jerry Krause coming to despite Jackson, and vice versa. That is not the case in OKC; Presti likes and respects what Brooks has done and is doing in OKC. But the longer Brooks goes without a deal, the more other agendas can take hold. If owner Clay Bennett is balking at paying Brooks the going rate for first-rate coaches, he may be the only thing that stops the Thunder from lurching toward what it seems to be, inevitably, becoming: The Next Big Thing, some next level [bleep] for which there is no answer.”