There aren’t many complaints you can have about the Oklahoma City Thunder’s play on the court, but to get where they need to be, they must get better at eliminating teams when they get the chance.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are without a doubt one of the best organizations in all of professional sports, and currently they have the best roster in the entire NBA. This is naturally going to lead to OKC winning a lot of games in the regular season and postseason.
We’ve seen that be the case over the last three seasons, and overall, there isn’t much to complain about when it comes to OKC’s on-court production. However, no team is perfect. The Thunder have struggled in elimination games once they get into higher levels of competition in the playoffs. If the Thunder want to get back to the mountaintop and win their second title, they need to improve at eliminating other teams when they get the chance to in the playoffs.
If you look at OKC’s run that culminated in a title, they have two seven-game series, both of which they could have ended in six. Luckily for the Thunder, they were able to knock out both the Denver Nuggets and the Indiana Pacers in a pair of game sevens to win the title, but that's not a sustainable way to win in the postseason.
The problem becomes that if you get to a game seven, all of a sudden a series comes down to one single game, and in basketball the best team does not always win one game. Leaving a playoff series to one game brings factors into play that you just don’t want to deal with, shooting variance being the big one. Let’s take a look at the Western Conference Finals from this past year.
Alex Caruso had been on a historic hot streak offensively throughout that series, which was deeply needed due to OKC’s injury problems. Well, the Thunder got pushed to a game seven after failing to get up for game six in San Antonio, and Caruso’s offense came crashing back down to earth. By no means is that the singular reason OKC lost, but it is an example of why you don’t want to let opportunities to eliminate other teams slip by simply because you have another chance.
Here’s the good news. OKC has struggled at times to perform in certain instances in the playoffs before. Until this past postseason, the Thunder struggled a lot in game three’s and knew it. Many players mentioned that it was a point of emphasis to make sure they came into those games ready, and this year OKC won all three of those games.
The Oklahoma City Thunder have to be better when given the chance to eliminate teams earlier in a playoff series, and given how they addressed previous issues with playoff performance dynamics, you should have all confidence that they can.
