You’re not supposed to win in Oklahoma City. Even when you do, you’re not supposed to win by more than a few points. Why? Because nobody blows the Thunder out at home. Sure, it happens in the regular season from time to time. Dallas did it this year. So did Miami. As for the playoffs? Nope. Never. Since moving from Seattle, the Thunder have only lost one playoff game by double digits, and that was in 2011 — their breakout season when they made a surprising run to the Western Conference Finals. It’s as hard a place to play as any in the NBA.
As such, heading into Monday night’s Game 1 showdown with the Los Angeles Clippers, everything was lined up for a standard OKC Game 1 victory: their opponent was coming off the same amount of rest — one day — but playing on the road. OKC also had a relatively easy time wrapping up their seven-game first round series against Memphis, compared to the Clippers, who had to come from behind to oust the feisty Warriors. Add in the emotional baggage of the week-long (and still on-going) Donald Sterling fiasco, and the Clippers were ripe to get their asses handed to them. Except, it never happened, and thanks to one person: Chris Paul.
While Chris Paul is as competitive an MF’er as exists in the NBA, historically speaking, he doesn’t fare well against Russell Westbrook and the Thunder. He gives about six inches to Westbrook (give or take one or two inches), so it’s a rather lopsided one-on-one point guard battle. However, on Monday night, Paul turned into the Ghost Of The Thunder Franchise’s past, dropping eight threes in a performance that would even give a Sonics’ fan a Vietnam-style flashback. His 8-of-10 barrage from deep was reminiscent of Dan Majerle’s eight threes in Game 5 of the 1993 Western Conference Finals and Rex Chapman’s nine threes in Game 1 of the first round in 1997 — two of the most infamous playoff games in Sonics/Thunder history (for the sake of this piece, I’m combining their history — because if the NBA can do it arbitrarily, so can I).
Paul’s lights-out performance set the stage for a 122-105 victory, which was only that close thanks to a barrage of three-point makes from OKC scrubs, long after Durant and Westbrook has checked out for the night. The Clippers made a bold statement Monday, and it’ll be up to OKC to counter it.
Update: Unfortunately, the fun killers over at YouTube terminated the highlight reel (along with the entire Dawk Ins account), so we’ll direct you to Kirk Goldsberry’s great breakdown of CP3’s night, complete with .gifs of all his shots.
Update 2: Okay, so there’s video again, but still read Goldsberry’s column.
[DawkIns]
