The Forecast for May 19 – May 25: Funaki Time
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I was back in Oklahoma for a grand total of a day on Friday of last week. I flew in to watch my little sister graduate from college. After the ceremony we all filed out onto the Raley lawn at Oklahoma Baptist University and began the age old tradition of taking entirely too many pictures.
Everyone standing around, relaxing our faces in between the smiles, the sun on us, people in not-so-breathable black robes hugging each other, talking about how they’ll still talk to each other a lot. During a brief bit of downtime my Dad walks up to me holding his phone up. It’s a Bleacher Report update. He’s made the Thunder one of his favorite teams on the app so any time any news on them hits the site he’ll get an alert to his phone. He shows me the devestation.
Serge Ibaka ruled out for rest of post-season with level 2 calf strain.
“What?” I ask, looking like someone is asking me to clean their toilet while they’re using it.
“That’s not good,” he says.
“No.”
We stand there for a little bit.
“That really sucks,” I say.
“Yea,” he says.
“Why’s this keep happening to us?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Well, this isn’t good,” I say.
“Yea,” he says, “Funaki time, I guess.”
“We should probably make shirts saying that,” I say.
We’re definitely all putting unfair expectations on Adams but that’s the state of the world right now. Next man up, you know? Here’s hoping he shows out.
Let’s take a look at The Forecast.
***
Game I
Team: San Antonio Spurs (1st Seed in West)
Round: Western Conference Finals
Date: Monday, May 19, 2014 (Away)
Details: The entire Western Conference Finals are being shown on TNT. We start to find out just how important Serge is. His ability to space the floor on offense by making open jumpers and his ability to protect the rim on defense has been stripped from us. That means Tony Parker feels a lot less nervous getting into the lane and their bigs can pack the paint a bit more on defense because Perk probably isn’t hitting his patented YOLO jumper more than once in this life.
This series will be an exercise in seeing just how far Durant and Westbrook have come. They’ve both raised their game to new, skyscraper heights in different ways this year and now they both need to max out. It would stand to reason that from this point on, neither of them can have an off night if the Thunder expect to win. This is the part of the movie where they both sit alone in the locker room and talk to each other about how it’s their time and they’re not going to have it taken away from them by something as indifferent as bad luck.
***
Game II
Team: San Antonio Spurs (1st Seed in West)
Round: Western Conference Finals
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 (Away)
Details: More Shaq! More Falling Skies! How are the skies still falling, though? Shouldn’t they have fallen all the way by now? Seems like Coach Yoast would’ve given up by now.
This will be the adjustment game. Either we surprise and steal one in Game 1 or there are real problems that need correcting immediately. Set fire to the fields! Fire Scotty Brooks! In a post-season full of quick triggers and huge emotional swings of “we’re terrible, no actually we’re the best” I’d expect that trend continues. There’s too little to talk about aside from basketball for that to change too much.
***
Game III
Team: San Antonio Spurs (1st Seed in West)
Round: Western Conference Finals
Date: Sunday, May 25, 2014 (Home)
Details: A HUGE break in between Games 2 & 3. Whoever loses this game will have awhile to sit and deal with it. Lots of chatter about who knows what they’re doing and who doesn’t. Lots of “this is why I’m smart and this dude right here is pretty stupid.” Regardless, undoubtedly it goes without saying, but the Thunder will want this one. Either they’re down 0-2 and needing to protect home court, or they stole one and they’re wanting to keep the advantage.
We’ll have to win one at their place. That’ll be hard enough. Hopefully we don’t flounder once at home making it to where we got to win their a couple times. Seems like the Spurs are the type to maybe allow it to happen once, but asking for it to go twice in one series, that seems a bit much from a Pop-Duncan team playing as well as they are right now.
***
Acceptable Outcome: 1-2
I’d take the Thunder just winning the Sunday game. Part of me thinks we need to catch them by surprise in Game 1 or 2, but so long as we win one there, it doesn’t really matter which one. We really have to protect home court, though.
I think we find out a lot about the team this series. Or, rather, maybe the rest of the world finds out about them. I think, if you’ve legitimately watched this Thunder team these last several years, you already know they’re resilient, you already know they’ll play hard. Effort is never an issue, not with Westbrook out there. And now Westbrook has played himself back to the reality we lived in prior to Patrick Beverley: I’m saying, he’s a top 5 player again. No Ibaka hurts, very much, but give me Durant and Westbrook and you’re also giving me a shot. When Westbrook went down last year, we were done. Despite the trying to talk ourselves out of that fact, that was always the case. Without Russ, without Durant, we can’t survive. I might be wrong, but I think we can survive without Serge. I really want to be right about that.
