Western Conference Finals Recap

                This year’s Western Conference Finals was a shock to me, I thought the Spurs were the best team I had ever seen and that they were an unstoppable force that would run through to the championship and that they had a legitimate shot at going undefeated throughout the playoffs, especially after watching the team beat OKC in the first two games of the series.  Then Oklahoma City went home and took over and proved to be the better team and deserving champions. 

                While I believe game 6 could easily have went either way and was a poorly officiated game, the free throw disparity was quite large, I do believe that OKC deserved to win the West this year.  Their role players emerged with key contributions in key moments from, Kendrick Perkins, Serge Ibaka, Nick Collison, Thabo Sefolosha, and shockingly Derek Fisher.  These players were able to play great defense and hit big shots at big moments.  James Harden and his beard developed into the player he needs to be for the team, he can hit key shots, penetrate and run the offense helping to lighten the load from Westbrook and Kevin Durant.  Russell Westbrook became the player that he had to be for OKC to compete for a championship, he can attack the basket, play disruptive defense, and this series really emerged into a floor general that focused on making plays for other players and feeding Durant instead of just focusing on himself.  Then what more could you say about Kevin Durant.  This series he made the case for being the best player in all of basketball the way he was able to take over 4^th quarters of games and score at will against the Spurs.  Durant emerged as the leader and unstoppable scorer, who knew how to pick his spots, get teammates involved and at what time he was going to have to take over a game.  To me though if you want to talk about the person who improved most from last season to this season and even in this series it would be Coach Scott Brooks.  Brooks was severely outcoached against Rick Carlisle last year, and in the first two games against Greg Popovich, but ended the series outcoaching Popovich.  He made the right adjustments in game, had a great gameplan and developed the perfect rotation for the team.   OKC has become the class of Western Conference and has done it in possibly the coolest way possible.  They were able to defeat the last 3 Western Conference Champions, as the Spurs, Lakers, and Mavericks have won every single Western Conference title since when the Utah Jazz won in 1998. 

                The Spurs this year have played with honor and I loved watching this team play and cheering for them this year.  I fell in love with this team’s playing style and how they fed off of each other and passed the ball always looking for the open man.  I loved their own homegrown veteran Big 3, especially Tim Duncan who seemed to reemerge as the player he had been, and continued being the consummate professional.  They had a disciplinarian coach who loved and developed young players and didn’t take kindly to sideline reporters asking questions.  Then OKC came around and this team wasn’t the same.  The deepest bench in basketball shortened to the point where Popovich in Game 6 played only 7 guys double digit minutes.   I do not want to talk down what the Spurs did too much though; they had an amazing season and were able to emerge as title contenders yet again after another season where the media had written them off as too old.  I will not do that, Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, and Popovich will be back, Leonard should continue to grow, and the Spurs should find one or two young players who nobody has heard of before.  Thank you Spurs for being an elite organization that put forth an unbelievable effort to lead themselves to the NBA’s best record.

                This was an unbelievable series between two unbelievable teams that produced one of the best series of basketball that I have ever watched.  Both OKC and the Spurs played amazing basketball and are elite organizations that provided dramatic theatre.  It was a great series between what I think are the two best teams in basketball that turned over a new leaf in basketball history as a new class of the West has emerged.