Daily Thunder.com

Ben Golliver of SI.com gives OKC an A+ for the season: “The Thunder do it on both ends despite their reputation as an offense-first machine, ranking No. 2 in offensive efficiency and No. 4 in defensive efficiency. They do it at home (fourth-best record) and on the road (second-best record). They’ve been doing it so well for so long that seemingly every two-game losing streak sets off alarm bells because, frankly, we’ve all been spoiled. The chief spoiler is Kevin Durant, who has maintained his 50/40/90 shooting into the season’s final week. In a world without LeBron James, he would be the clear king. If you had to bet your life on one team’s being capable of dethroning Miami, it would be the Thunder — despite the one-sided 2012 Finals and the Harden trade. They’re that talented, aggressive, fine-tuned, deep, big, long and just that good.”

David Thorpe of ESPN Insider says Jeremy Lamb should study Tony Allen: “Lamb is uniquely talented with super-long arms and a beautifully smooth jump shot. Allen is a whirling dervish of a player who injects energy into his team and makes countless plays that don’t show up in the box score but help his team win. Lamb has the chops to hang in the league for a long time as a pure shooter, but if he wants to be a significant player he’ll have to learn how to contribute in ways beyond being a catch-and-shoot guy. He’s unlikely to ever be the kind of leader Allen has become by playing hard, but moving in that direction would be a good place to start.” Keep Reading…

Zach Lowe of Grantland: “Basically, the Thunder have a lot of emphatic blowout wins against these teams and several toss-up close losses, including recent road defeats on buzzer-beaters in both Denver (Ty Lawson’s go-ahead jumper) and Memphis (Marc Gasol’s artful tip-in). That’s an encouraging portfolio on balance; several studies have found blowouts more predictive of postseason success than close wins. The margin for error gets very narrow in the late rounds of the playoffs, and the Thunder will miss Harden’s off-the-bounce creativity and dynamite passing on possessions when Kevin Durant is on the bench, Serge Ibaka’s third-option ambitions are going haywire, and/or Russell Westbrook is taking pull-up 3s in transition with 20 seconds left on the shot clock. But the Harden hole will really be isolated to those instances; the team has been fine without him in the big picture, on both ends, mostly because of incremental improvements among all of its core players (but not Derek Fisher).”

Darnell Mayberry: “In many ways, the final three games will be as challenging as the past five. Unlike the past five, the next three will come against sub-.500 teams, only one of which (Milwaukee) will make the postseason. It’ll be more of a mental challenge to take care of business in these final three than it was to get up for the previous five. Those were about executing and the Thunder playing up to its potential. These final three will be about showing up.” Keep Reading…