Rust? What rust?
Elbows? What elbows?
It was evident pretty quickly that the Thunder weren’t focusing whatsoever on any of that extracurricular noise. Forget all the storylines and angles leading into this thing. It was basketball, and basketball only in Game 1. It was about executing a plan, playing your game and handling business. And they did that to the tune of a 29-point hammering of the Lakers to take a 1-0 lead.
“There’s no question we have a team full of gym rats,” Scott Brooks said. “They want to play basketball. That’s all they want to do. They want to play basketball. They’re basketball players. They probably don’t have much of a life off the court. You’re concerned, you’re a little worried that rust would be there, but we did a lot of scrimmaging, we did a lot of drills, we did a lot of things we did in training camp that prepared us. But I wasn’t anticipating this type of game.” Keep Reading…
Eyes on the Prize: Lakers-Thunder preview
The storylines are aplenty. Elbows, trash talk, revenge, vendettas, old vs. new, Derek Fisher vs. the Lakers, legacies and on and on and on. But forget the angles, the hooks, the sidebars. All of that is just noise to what really matters — winning.
The Thunder have been sitting and waiting for the second round for some time while their opponent had to scratch its way here. What that means? Who knows. But the Thunder are where they need to be, well rested and (hopefully) healthy. They dispatched the Mavericks as planned, looked to restore some of their former power in doing so and should roll well into the second round to face the very formidable Lakers.
What scares me most is how good I feel. I hate that. The Thunder have been in the postseason three times now and this is far and away the best I’ve felt about a playoff series. That could be irrational overconfidence. That could just be delusion built up over nine days of over-thinking and boredom. But from everything I can see, the Thunder have a clear edge against the Lakers. Though again, that type of feeling is what scares me. Then again, it’s the playoffs and virtually anything scares me. Nothing feels right at this point. Keep Reading…