For 18 minutes, it looked like Oklahoma City had a chance.
It wasn’t pretty, the Thunder shot just 37 percent for the first quarter and the Spurs were once again getting points in the paint (16 in the first quarter), but the Thunder defense was better and behind 9 first quarter points from Kevin Durant it was a two point Thunder lead after one. It stayed like that for the first half of the second quarter.
Then the floodgates opened.
San Antonio closed out first half on 25-8 run and take 15 point lead into break and then early in the second half blew the game wide open. Once again San Antonio got whatever it wanted on offense — points in the paint, 54 this game, and when the Thunder tried to pack it in and take away the inside Danny Green shot over the top of them, hitting 7-of-10 from three. Meanwhile an increasingly frustrated Thunder team just started chucking the ball on offense and not giving a full effort on defense. This happens to OKC, if they struggle on one end it bleeds onto the other end of the court and things fall apart fast. To the point Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were sniping at each other a little on the court.
The end result was a 112-77 Spurs rout. San Antonio has a commanding 2-0 lead in this series, which heads to Oklahoma City for Game 3 on Sunday.
If you’re a Thunder fan trying to hold on to hope, you could point to the 2012 playoff series between these teams when the Spurs led 2-0 and the Thunder came back to win four straight, take the series and advance to the Finals.
But this is a far worse situation for the Thunder — James Harden isn’t around this time, Serge Ibaka isn’t around this time, and this is a far more athletic and improved Spurs team.
It’s hard to find many reasons for hope for the Thunder.
If the Thunder put out a defensive lineup — like their starting five with Thabo Sefolosha, Nick Collison and Kendrick Perkins in the lineup — it turns Durant and Westbrook into the only scorers and the sole focus of the defense. The result was that starting lineup shot 5-of-16 and was -7 for the game.
As the defense focused on Durant and Westbrook, they became jump shooters who could not get into the lane.
“Our offense is good when we’re attacking and getting to the line and we weren’t getting to the line,” Thunder coach Scott Brooks said in his post game press conference televised on NBA TV.
Durant had 15 points on 16 shots and only two of his shots came inside 8 feet of the rim. Russell Westbrook had 15 points on 24 shots. As a team the Thunder shot 39.3 percent.
San Antonio had balance — Tony Parker 22 points, Danny Green 21, Tim Duncan 14, and as a team they shot 50 percent. The Spurs were 9-of-23 from three and got to the free throw line 23 times.
What the Spurs did is something they can do every game — share the ball, cut off the ball, get into the paint, knock down threes. They have two blowout wins in this series and they can replicate that model on the road.
Outside of taking Serge Ibaka to Lourdes and getting a miracle recovery, I’m not sure there is much Scott Brooks can do to change this series around. He should start Steven Adams (over Perkins) and Caron Butler (over Sefolosha) but in the end that’s not going to be enough.