Ten reasons why the Thunder will close out Denver tonight

1. The Thunder is the better team. If anyone would like to argue that point, the prosecution presents five wins in six games as State’s Exhibit A. The prosecution rests.

2. OKC is one boxout, and one Russell Westbrook desperation jumper that hit the rim, from being unbeaten at home in the playoffs. I don’t know if that record will survive this postseason, but it will survive this series.

3. Kendrick Perkins is probably super pissed right now. Westbrook too.

4. Nene’s hairstyle is not postseason material. He looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid.

5. Tattoos, or at least getting them here or working here as a tattoo artist, was illegal in Oklahoma so recently that there has to be some carry-over effect. Bad karma for Denver in OKC. Especially Chris Andersen, who prompted my brother’s basketball-novice girlfriend to blurt out, “Whoa. Eewww. What the hell is that all about? That’s gross. What’s his problem? Why does that guy do that?”

6. It finally rained here this week. That proves the man upstairs is smiling on Oklahoma at the moment.

7. J.R. Smith is going to shoot too much. The man is coming off of a hot game … but shot 40 percent from the field on the season. He also appears to be in love with himself. Call it a hunch, but I think he’ll enter tonight’s game thinking he can be The Man, and he’ll shoot the Nuggets right out of it. If George Karl doesn’t bench him like he did in Game 2, I feel like Smith is going to keep shooting and keep missing. Smith shot 46 percent in Game 4, but he doesn’t often shoot well two games in a row (although, to be fair, he often does it for more than two games in a row when he does shoot well for more than one game).

8. Oklahoma City hardly ever loses twice in a row. It happened only five times all season. The Thunder lost three times in a row only once, and that included two games played without anyone involved on either side of OKC’s midseason trades.

9. The arena is going to be as loud as it has ever been tonight. We will not let them lose.

10. Why not? Next is now.