Daily Thunder.com

Rob Mahoney of SI.com on Houston’s chances of upsetting OKC: “All of which leaves the Rockets entirely too much offensive freedom and access to too many quality shots. What’s interesting, though: When operating in smaller sets, things aren’t so different for Oklahoma City’s offense working against Houston’s defense. Omer Asik is asked to cover an absurd amount of space and help with incredible frequency, all of which should work to the Thunder’s favor as they look to score against a pretty mediocre defensive team. We saw some of that in play in Game 5 as Oklahoma City finally grasped that the extra wrap-around/dump pass would be there on most every drive after drawing Asik’s rotation, but the Thunder are held back by having worse shooters lining the perimeter and fewer dynamic offensive players overall. The Thunder are a team built to sustain by way of Westbrook and Durant, and with one out for the postseason, Oklahoma City is very clearly vulnerable. Yet with Durant still in the fold, the Thunder maintain the edge.”

Darnell Mayberry on Serge Ibaka: “Ibaka is not a post-up player. It’s not his strength, and the Thunder has wisely resisted the temptation of force-feeding Ibaka on the low block. Despite showing tremendous strides in his offensive game, Ibaka still struggles to catch the ball cleanly and is still snake-bitten by turnovers. His passing skills out of the post, meanwhile, are lacking, which prevents him from really making defenses pay.” Keep Reading…

Ben Golliver of SI.com: “Those crying cowardice in response to Brooks’ move need to exit the basketball freeway. The Thunder’s strategy was unsightly, sure, but it was both legal and logical given their lack of momentum and Houston’s hot shooting (40 percent from deep on the night). Did anyone expect it would come to this? One of the league’s premier teams, at home, trying to gimmick out a game-changing advantage? Absolutely not. Does that make the Thunder bad people, bad basketball citizens, or stupid? Of course not. The move wasn’t totally effective. It also wasn’t totally ineffective. Asik out-shot expectations, slightly, but not devastatingly so. Was the alternative reality in which the Thunder simply played it straight guaranteed to be better or worse? We can’t ever know for sure, but the two teams played the final three minutes essentially even, too, making a major hypothetical swing unlikely. In the end, credit goes to Asik for delivering in a pressure situation, on the road, and with his team’s playoff lives in his hands.”

Tom Ziller of SB Nation: “In some ways, drawing out a winnable series now is good for the Thunder. KD’s the guy who matters most, and he has impossibly young legs. He’ll survive a seven-game series. So will Serge Ibaka, Jackson, Martin and Thabo Sefolosha. These losses give the Thunder more time to figure out what to do without Russ. The only major concern is that they’ll get stunned by James Harden, the other guy they are missing. The Rockets don’t see themselves as practice dummies for the Thunder, and the Houston fans are going to crank the difficulty level up for the Thunder on Friday.” Keep Reading…

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop on Game 4 and hero ball: “Simply put, with more respect for open shooters, and less fascination with who’s shooting, the Thunder absolutely could have scored more. And they only had to score a tiny bit more to, you know, end the series. It came to a hilarious head with 12 seconds left. The Thunder had been force-feeding Durant so religiously the defense scarcely looked at anybody else. And yet, in the face of evidence timeouts only help the defense, and despite a Rockets team scrambling to get in place, the Thunder called a timeout.”

Tom Haberstroh in a 5-on-5 says the Rockets can come back: “The recency bias bites us badly in the playoffs and it always looks like the team that won the most recent game has “figured it out.” But that’s not it. The Thunder lost their second-best player and the Rockets have a shot anytime Derek Fisher is getting about 30 minutes a night in 2013.” Keep Reading…