Daily Thunder.com

Harvey Araton of the NY Times: “While Oklahoma City has no courtside celebrity conga line seats, Durant is not Tim Duncan and the Thunder are far from the second coming of the Spurs. Here there is enough star power to challenge the notion that supreme N.B.A. talent must invariably migrate to the vacationland hot spots like South Beach. Durant and Westbrook didn’t need to. They signed long-term deals, forgoing their first crack at free agency and establishing the Thunder as the anti-Heat for the foreseeable future.”

Bill Simmons looking back on the series: “Who could have guessed that Oklahoma City would morph into the ’91 Bulls, that Tony Parker would suddenly and inexplicably stop playing like one of the league’s best five players, that San Antonio’s role players would roll over, that every OKC player would make just about every big shot at every crucial point, that Ibaka and Perkins would make 18 of 20 shots in a remarkable Game 4, that Westbrook would find the right calibration (most of the time) between “reckless” and “breathtaking,” that TNT’s critical Game 2 commentary would motivate Perkins like it did, that Fisher would climb out of his NBA coffin and submit a couple of old-school monster Fish plays (Lakers fans are shaking their heads in disbelief right now), that Scott Brooks would swing the series with some killer adjustments and OUTCOACH Gregg Popovich, that Oklahoma City’s crowd would show Miami what it’s actually like to “fan up,” that everyone who grabbed OKC +500 after Game 2 would feel like a gambling savant, that the league would assign the Hebner Twins (a.k.a. Joey Crawford and Bill Kennedy) to Game 6, and most of all, that Durant would go Young MJ on us and simply refuse to allow the Spurs to advance, no matter how good they were?” Keep Reading…

J.A. Adande of ESPN.com: “This was the series when the Thunder stopped acquiring merely knowledge and began applying it with striking results. They accelerated the learning curve, while simultaneously slamming the brakes on the San Antonio Spurs. Not only did they halt the Spurs’ 20-game winning streak, the Thunder sent them spinning in reverse and out of the playoffs with four consecutive losses. The Spurs lost as many times in seven days as they had in the previous 12 weeks.”

Chris Mannix of SI.com: “Champions are forged in the fires of failures, hardened by defeats, educated by its conquerors. They have traveled the rockiest of roads, Oklahoma City: One last, lackluster season in Seattle, a disastrous 3-29 start in a new home a year later, a first-round loss to the Lakers in 2010 and a five-game beating by the Mavericks last season. They battled and they lost; but they learned and got better. The Thunder are not a finished product, not with a team full of NBA toddlers that seems to be developing in real time. But after Wednesday night’s 107-99 series-clinching win over San Antonio they are officially the best in the West, and in a couple of weeks they could prove that they are already better than everyone else.” Keep Reading…

Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com tries to figure out the LeBron or Durant debate: “Afraid to go to the line? Durant wants to be on that line, he needs to be on that line. His belief in his shot is total, and with good reason, which is why you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Kevin Durant if you were starting an NBA team today and could pick any player in the world to build around. LeBron looks better, runs faster, jumps higher, fills the stat box with a few more numbers than Durant. But with 10 seconds left in a close game, Durant’s the guy you want shooting the ball. So forget what I said last week. Forget even what I wrote earlier in this story. Give me the power to start an NBA team from scratch? Give me Kevin Durant with my first pick. I’d like to have LeBron, sure. I’d like to have the most talented all-around player in the game. But I’d rather win.”

Carles of Grantland: “Oklahoma City is hoping to ride the Thunder into a new decade of prosperity and development. The city seems destined to be overpopulated with ‘trying too hard to look urban’ new developments surrounding their downtown, just like in Austin, Texas. The personal culture is a more tolerable version of Dallas. It will be interesting to look at the city when Kevin Durant retires and there’s a pretty definitive model on the impact of a Hall of Fame player on the economic development of a ‘small market’ city.” Keep Reading…