The OKC Thunder Are Going To The NBA Finals

The OKC Thunder Are Going To The NBA Finals

The OKC Thunder are heading to the NBA Finals. Boy oh boy, did they come out and gain of a foul and put the put the foot on the throat. They showed a graphic at one point in this game and it said the Minnesota Timberwolves had 15 made field goals and 15 damn turnovers to match. Talk about a legendary defense and we’ve been talking about it forever, but damn, this is one of them things. And we’ve also mentioned how homecourt advantage hasn’t really mattered much in the postseason. Yeah, it has. Just in OKC, the Garden don’t really get that level of pop and win or or energy from the team to match the crowd. No other place has really done that except for OKC where they now have only lost one playoff game this entire run. This team is ridiculous and we’ve been saying it. We’ve been preaching it. But even then, there were so many skeptics. There were so many people that had question marks and some of them were real question marks that I can’t look past. But I feel like they’ve answered almost every single one of them. and they are four games away from potentially raising the Larry O’Brien trophy. We got to talk Timberwolves. I think on tomorrow’s podcast, I’m going to go more in depth about what could potentially be next for them. Um, but it definitely felt like they came out into this game with the idea that this is where the series ends. You think about last game with them being this close to pulling off, you know, and tying up the series 22 with Nquille, Jaden, and Dante all having big performances, but Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle not coming along for the ride. I can understand how that would be demoralizing and you had to come two days later to OKC to try to get the spirit back up. I don’t think they were able to do that. So again, I think I’m going to talk about them more tomorrow because I I do want to spend more of the time shining light on the Oklahoma City Thunder because they’ve been able to do and and be as good as I anticipated. They just tweeted me a clip of me talking about the OKC Thunder before the season started. We’re talking about preseason and my exact quote was, “I like almost everything about the OKC Thunder.” My first thing was like my my finals prediction was Thunder versus Celtics. Um, obviously the Celtics didn’t get there, but the Thunder thing I felt pretty damn good about, even though the Western Conference is that insane, right? They had pretty much answered all of the questions, at least in my mind, going into this season. You think about them going back to their series against Dallas last year, they they were missing three-point shooting, and they didn’t really address that. They’re actually on pace to be one of the worst three-point shooting teams to win a championship if they do end up winning a championship, which is some interesting stuff. I think they’d be bottom f bottom three since 2000 if I’m not mistaken. But the three-point shooter was a thing. The rebounding was a thing and the biggest question was could their number two guy be a number two guy. Shakius Alexander has been the number one guy in like two playoff runs at this point and he has been as consistent as ever. Whether you like watching, you hate watching, you think he has a great whistle, whatever, whatever, you have to admit that this guy is good to give his team 30 a night regardless of what coverage you throw at him. I mean, you do have the anomalies like in game number three that was where he had 14 points or whatever, but more times than not, he’s giving you 30 points and he’s doing it effectively. So the question turned into, will Dub be ready? And I thought that last year there were many times in the Dallas Maverick series where his team desperately needed him to look like a number two, but he wasn’t necessarily ready for it. Last series for six games, we were like, damn, this could be it for OKC because Dub is shooting 30% from the field. He’s shooting 22% from three and they really need something like that. They need him to step up because Chad Homegrren wasn’t playing as good as he could play either. And then game number seven, JDub answered every question you could possibly ask about him. When you look back at his statline overall through that series, it won’t tell the full story about him being, you know, really bad for well, five of six games cuz he did have the 30-point game in there and them him having that game number seven. But since that game number seven, JDub has been basically all of the accolades that he has accomplished for the regular season, he has now carried those over for the postseason, with him being an all-star, with him being an alldefensive player, and with him being an allNBA player. You’re seeing it. You saw it for the entirety of this series, the rebounding aspect. I don’t know if I remember over the last three series between Memphis, Denver, and then Minnesota. If I cared about the other team crashing offensive glass like we saw them get tow up at in the regular season and in the postseason last year. Sam Prey went into this offseason said, “Hey, we need a big Isaiah Harststein had a great run for the Knicks. Let’s overpay him for his value, but we can afford to do that right now. There’s a team that’s thirsty to give up an alldefensive caliber player and Alex Garuso. Let’s just give them a a scrap player that we don’t even like ourselves.” and Josh Gia, I think you can still be great. I don’t know. They did everything right. And one thing people are remember is that they’ve been able to draft so well in the Sam Prey era. Obviously, you got the Alexi Pushepskis and the Usman Jane picks occasionally, but outside of that, Chad and Jub were the same draft class, wasn’t it? Pick number two and pick number 12, pick number 11 or something like that. This year they drafted AJ Mitchell who like is a real ball player as a as a rookie and I can’t imagine how good he could be as a role player next year. And then they got the dude and Nola Tobic who was a top five protected pick before he got injured. He’s just chilling. This team is poised to do like you know we talk about it being a parody era. I don’t want to act like just because they’re in the finals right now that means that next year they’re going to make it. Next year they’re going to win. But because they still have to win four more games for even to have the conversation about them winning this year. But they are more equipped than any of the previous champions to do it again. They are more equipped. I’m going to say it again. They are more equipped to do it again more than any other recent champion. And that is insane to say because as good as Chad Homer is right now, think about this. As good as Chad Homegr is right now, he’s damn good. He’s he’s already one of the best defensive players in the league and he is probably the worst he’ll ever be. He’s in the finals. What? What? Come on, man. Nobody loves an open three more when they’re up by 40 than Lou Dort at home. You see, I just I can’t sing to praises. And you know, people have called me a Thunder Glazer this entire season, but the reality is I just I just saw this team as many people did. I’m not on an island by myself. Majority of people looked at this OKC team. what they did last year is being a one seed and like they can carry that over and get better, but I just saw them as a team that was so well equipped to pretty much answer any question a team threw at them. And so far we’re seeing that to be true. Um, and they’re four games away. They are four games away from from winning the NBA championship. And they would be one of the youngest teams to do it. That’s nuts. And and it it made me think like is this team the anomaly, right? You think about, you know, teams having the average age of being like 28 to 34. um will there rotation players when it comes to NBA championships? Is this team the anomaly or as a part of it being the parody era, if you will, or this new age? Will we see more teams be relatively young and win early? Um I came to the conclusion this is an anomaly team. They have an all-time guy in Shay. Call it what you want. He’s an all-time guy. I know again people don’t like him, whatever. He is an all-time player already. They have a all-time kind of defender in Chet and he’s it’s very early on so I’m projecting here but like there’s a world where Chad stays healthy for 10 years. He’s a 10 time alldefensive player and Dub’s amazing as well and for them to have the Case off the bench it’s just I don’t know they’re going to the finals and in this game you know we we did obviously you can tell I’m not at home. Can you tell that? We we uh shot our our episode of our TV show tonight. So, we all watched this game together and we got notebooks, whatever. Well, I got my phone taking the notes cuz I don’t bring the notebook out of the house. And by the third minute, I stopped taking notes because we kind of looked at each other and said, “Yeah, this is it, right? We could talk schematically, but like why?” Because this is it. When you force a team to have four turnovers in the first two minutes, what do you you know what I’m saying? They’ve been able to put their foot on throats and close out these games. And I think that is very important for a young team. And now they’re about to go into a series again probably versus the Pacers. And I think this could be a really good matchup because um there has not been a team just yet just yet. And maybe this changes that their lead guard has been able to say, “hm, I had a good series against this defense.” Again, I’m talking about this version of defense, not last year’s version of defense. Whether it be Jaw, who said he was figuring it out, but whether it be Jaw, whether it be Jamal Murray had a I think he had one really good game in that series. whether it be Jamal Murray or Anthony Edwards, none of these guys have been able to penetrate this defense. And obviously the head of their snake in Indiana is Tyres Hallebert who is a different kind of guard than the guys that I mentioned. So I wonder if again I’m I’m projecting because that series still ain’t closed and I’m going to have a week like to think about this if they close out the game tomorrow. Um, I wonder if the play style of Tyres Hallebert being different than what Anthony Edwards does or what John Morent does or what Jamal Murray does, if that shifts some things from OKC. Not completely sure. Um, OKC was completely okay with giving up corner threes his entire series and Aaron East shooting 50% from three. I don’t know if you want to get that one or not. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m again I’m leaning very very heavy OKC, but I think it could be very interesting. um quickly because I have not been on Twitter, but I can recognize that the conversation around the Minnesota Timber are going to be widely negative. And again, I’m going to do a deep dive about this on the podcast. Um I don’t I don’t know a world where they could do some things this offseason where they would be better than this OKC team. Let me say that. But also, I don’t think that they should be over panicking about losing to a potentially historic team. It feels very similar to what I said with the last series versus Denver, especially seeing how OKC took care of business in this series that like maybe Denver is closer than we all anticipated, right, with them taking them to seven. I think that Minnesota is still a really good team. And if you told me this was a conference finals rematch next year, I I wouldn’t call you crazy. So, I don’t know exactly what they would do, but I don’t think they should hold their head low because they lost the series because I I genuinely do believe that OKC was just that much better than the competition in the Western Conference. Um, so yeah, NBA finals, here they

Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code KENNY http://shopmando.com/! #mandopod

Kenny Beecham Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/@KennyBeechamPod
Spotify Link: https://rb.gy/py5oj
Apple Podcast Link: https://rb.gy/lwi9n

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://enjoybasketball.beehiiv.com/subscribe
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/KOT4Q

My Other Channels:
Kenny For Real: https://bit.ly/3gzL7m0
KOT4Q: https://bit.ly/2WuhewL
Kenny 13aseball: https://bit.ly/3mzUohZ