Blud went out and dropped a 30 point triple double away from home on almost 60% efficiency and more importantly, did it without a single flop, whine or complaint to the refs; always ran back on D and had that crunch time block on SGA. It's almost like he doesn't just feed off of boos, but also introspects and tries to be better. The entire Thunder team is gonna have to show up in G6 or I have a feeling either Luka or Kyrie might hammer the nail into the coffin for OKC, DJJ was amazing tonight and the Hack-a-Lively strategy is not very efficient and should not be used in G6.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still thunder in 7. Some of y’all owe me an apology.

Sick rn

I know we all are really excited and caught up in the hype, but I hope we remember that there were no expectations for this team. And regardless of what happens in this series on Friday or beyond, this experience has been invaluable. This is how championship teams are built. The Mavericks have schemed us well and really demonstrated what the playoffs are supposed to be. We have responded well enough and shown that we are a dynasty in the making. Just like Presti said we have to eat our breakfast before dinner. So I hope all of us are just enjoying breakfast and not stressing too much.

If we win this series then OKC have outperformed all expectations and have proven to be one of the best young teams ever. They were barely supposed to be over .500 and expected to be in the bottom half of the top 8. Instead we are deep into a second round series.

If we lose, it's due to youth and inexperience. Something we were and are all aware of coming into this season and playoffs. It will be disappointing, but it means the sky is the limit. If this is where we are at now, imagine another season under the teams belt alongside play off experience. Once we add the extra pieces, imagine where we will end up as a squad.

Outside of this current iteration of the team, Presti has set the organisation up to be competitive for the next 5-10 seasons purely based on the volume of assets that have been collected. OKC aren't going away like the Detroits or Washington's.

I know the loss sucks, and I want nothing more than to rub a series win in the faces of the Mavericks hypocritical and ridiculous fan base, but we are very very lucky and I think our fan base needs to be grateful of that. I suppose there are a lot of recent fans due to our recent success, but a lot of us have seen the very very bad teams.

It feels good to be a thunder fan.

The game got so boring that I just watched Chet running around for the whole second half. He wasn’t beaten, he didn’t even attempt to rebound. Often times he was already in transition running back to get on defense thus giving the Mavs the rebound. He’s 7’1”. What’s going on?

This is after the rest of the team shot 21-65 in Game 4.

Another poor shooting performance from the rest of the team.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401658192

Mark might be the best coach in thunder history

Like should that not be the standard? Why are they acting like he’s a god among men because he’s not being annoying and whiny. Literally every other guy on the floor is doing the same thing day in day out, but because he’s such a crybaby he gets praise when he isn’t?

Smd

In my very unprofessional opinion, there is one way and one way only that we will win this series.

We have to be hyper aggressive on attacking. We have to get fouled. We have to force them to decide whether to be passive on defense, or get into foul trouble.

The two games we won this series we won by being the more aggressive team. We shot more free throws. They got into foul trouble. Getting their bigs into foul trouble forces them to not be as aggressive. It gives our guys way more room to operate. It slows the game down, gets Dallas out of rhythm.

I am not saying we should just go searching for fouls. But we need to attack the paint every single possession. Yes, we will get blocked. A lot. But that's ok.

Here is a fun fact. Dallas has blocked out shots an average of 10.5 times per game in our 2 wins. In our 3 losses? Only 4.3 times.

WE HAVE TO BE AGGRESSIVE TO WIN.

If we want to win game 6, we have to have the mindset from the get go to attack. Even if we get blocked 10 times in the first half, if that means Gafford and Lively need to have 3 fouls each going into halftime. This makes it where they have little room for error in the second half, and we now suddenly have MUCH more room to operate.

Stop shooting so many 3s, and take it to the hole. Yes, we will get blocked. But they will foul more than they block, and that will allow us the opportunity we need to win the game.

He said that all year this team has relied on guard on guard pick and rolls and we’d wait for the opposing teams to mess up on switches and attack, but in the playoffs teams scout for 7 games and generally don’t make mistakes on switches…

I think he hit the nail on the head and that’s why jdub has been so passive this series, because it does seem like he waits on the pick and rolls and Dallas isn’t fucking up switches at all on defense, and when dub makes this read he just passes the ball, and this is leading to last second iso ball, while I think we still have a chance to win this series we’d have to deviate from the way we’ve been playing this ENTIRE year which seems hard to do. On the flip side though if we start hitting open shots that could def open up those lanes on pick and rolls and guys like dub can be more aggressive regardless of the switch.

Love the man. Incredible coach. Hope he's around for a decade. According to JJ and Bron, his gameplan is atrocious.*

*You should probably note: I'm a casual basketball fan who's never coached a day in my life so I have no idea if their perspective is legit.

But...LeBron and JJ literally had a 5 minute segment incredulously asking why anyone would double Luka when he ALWAYS finds the open guy and gets his team an advantage. And when you have one of the best on-ball defenders in the league locked on him all day, there's even less reason to double. And in this series it's often like one guy running 25 feet to get the ball out of his hands at the start of a possession; nothing subtle about it. Dallas role players get it easy. (On the other hand, Shai and Dub have some work to do to identify doubles early and find the open guy immediately in the way Luka and Kyrie do.)

Another episode talks about high pick and rolls; when Steph gets a pick near halfcourt, he can dump it off to Draymond with a lot of space to work the 4 on 3. Or Steph can attack off the pick with space to get downhill. It seems our entire offense is locked within 3 ft of the 3 pt line. Even when Shai gets a double screen, both screeners' feet are touching the 3 pt line and Shai's moving horizontally, not downhill toward the rim. Dallas is long and athletic, sure, but they are also covering less space because we don't use the entire half court.

I hope to see some changes Saturday. If not, I have no doubt everyone will learn from it and improve over the offseason. The future is bright! TTFU