Throughout the NBA play-offs, The National’s resident NBA dudes Jonathan Raymond and Kevin Jeffers will be breaking down the key talking points of the night before, plus looking around the scope of the league. Here are our NBA Play-off takeaways.
Monday's score: Oklahoma City Thunder 108, Golden State Warriors 102 (Thunder lead series 1-0)
Know who the Warriors looked like in losing Game 1 at home? A bit like the Spurs, of the last round.
For four straight games now, Oklahoma City have managed to get a ball-movement team to play them on their terms, clogging passing lanes and, in the case of Monday night's contest, exceptional ball-denial on Stephen Curry.
The free-flowing Warriors, who had built a sizeable lead heading into the second half and maintained it well into the third quarter, simply stopped functioning as such.
The Thunder didn’t win Game 1 with offence – Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were 17-for-51 overall combined and went through one particular 0-for-7 stretch in crunch time – but by again junking up the pace-and-space flow of their opponents.
Read more: 'Attack mode' Russell Westbrook steals Stephen Curry's thunder as OKC take opening game | More play-offs coverage
Steven Adams baiting Draymond Green and Klay Thompson into ill-advised, wild drives with the game still hanging in the balance. Dion Waiters evoking Matthew Dellavedova of a year ago and bodying Stephen Curry into passivity.
Coach of the Year Steve Kerr made a mistake sitting Curry and Green for about four minutes to start the fourth quarter. Golden State operate best in a comfort zone, not playing catch-up, but rather burying opponents under the weight of their beauty.
Those four minutes turned a 3-point 88-85 lead into a 4-point 95-91 deficit, and the Warriors never quite regained their footing. Curry couldn’t get the ball, and the likes of Thompson, Green, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Harrison Barnes weren’t enough to compensate for his inactivity.
The good news for the Warriors is that they looked like this against Cleveland at the start of last year’s Finals and fought their way out. Kerr and his staff are excellent at making adjustments.
The bad news is the Thunder found a working formula and stole a game on the road when neither Durant nor Westbrook were even really all that great. If either star has a takeover game or two in him, the margins are that much slimmer for the Warriors. The screws will feel that much tighter on the suddenly chastened 73-win champs.
With Adams beasting around the middle, Durant causing issues defensively with his length, Andre Roberson hounding, Westbrook going maniacally all-out as he does, Waiters punking Curry and even Enes Kanter going all-action for a bit, the Thunder looked like more than just the same old Durant-Westbrook team.
They have looked over the past few weeks like they have finally forged a winning identity, with a fierceness and a formidable us-against-the-world bond. They look a bit like the Bad Boy Pistons.
The Bad Boy Pistons can tell you how you beat a team with the best player on the planet on the other side. Michael Jordan will attest.
This doesn’t by any means spell doom for Golden State. Not with the way they adjust, not with their basketball smarts and not with the way they can explode over the course of three or four or five or six games.
But they did get drawn into a bad basketball game on Monday night. And a bad basketball series, they can lose.
That, as much as anything, might have been Oklahoma City’s greatest victory in Game 1.
jraymond@thenational.ae
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