GSW at OKC Game 6: What's Going Down Tonight

I am a basketball fan for whom legacies hold a lot of significance. The place of a player as he compares to others throughout history is very important to me. The same goes for teams. I love to argue which players were better, which teams would have won a series against one another, etc. For example, the Cleveland Cavaliers just closed out the Toronto Raptors last night to secure a trip to the NBA Finals. This will be LeBron James' sixth straight Finals appearance. That number is absolutely mind-boggling to me. It's so incredible that only players from the 1960's Celtics had ever done it before- which was a different era with less talent in the league. Things like that, things that give a player historical significance, matter to me. It should matter to everyone.

With that being said, there's even more on the line in Oklahoma City tonight when the Warriors play at the Thunder. The Warriors won Game 5 at home after going down 3-1 in the series with a couple of blowout losses at Oklahoma City. Obviously they need to win tonight to keep the series going and set up a winner-take-all Game 7 back in Oakland, and obviously OKC would like to avoid heading back to Oracle Arena, but there's more than just that in the balance tonight. There are real historical stakes riding on this game. Let's break them down for each team.

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS

• If the Warriors go down tonight, or even if they lose Game 7, this historical 73-9 season loses almost all significance. I thought Bill Simmons made a good point on his podcast this week that it will be remembered like the 18-1 Patriots from 2007; people will say "Oh yeah that regular season was fun... BUT then they choked in the Western Conference Finals." The Warriors have probably lost the chance to be considered the best team of all time with their play this series, but they still have the chance win back-to-back titles which puts them among some of the greatest teams ever.
• If the Warriors go out with their tails between their legs in six games, all of the older players who questioned their greatness will be validated. Nobody will be able to say that Oscar Robertson and Charles Barkley were wrong, especially since the guy who all the old-schoolers swear by is on the other side in Russell Westbrook.
• Similarly, there will have to be a question of the Warriors dominance and play style going forward. For the last two years much of the league has fallen in love with the Warriors and their high-octane style of play predicated on crazy threes. Many writers and even team executives have thought that the Warriors will continue their dominance for the next 5 years. I love how the Warriors play and think the advanced-metrics say that a lot of three-point attempts is the best way to play, but the Thunder have exposed the weaknesses in the Warriors' style. The Thunder have used their incredible length at all positions to protect the rim, contest jumpers, and close passing lanes, which has suffocated the Warriors' ball movement and limited easy looks. Taking away the easy shots is key in stopping the Warriors because once Steph Curry and Klay Thompson see one or two go in, they can hit just about anything thereafter. And once those threes start to drop, every other part of the team's game improves because they gain energy from those shots. All I'm saying is that now we have to seriously question if the Warriors will run roughshod through the league with their incredible shooting and passing like we thought they would, because the Thunder have given the blueprint on how to beat them.
• If Steph Curry wants to begin his ascent into the pantheon of all-time greats, or at least leave little doubt as to his legacy, he needs to have a great game. He cannot go down with only one and a half good games in this series in the year that he won the MVP on the greatest regular season team ever. They definitely can't get blown out and he probably has to have a similar game to the one he had in Oklahoma City earlier this year, when he dropped 46 and hit the game-winner from half-court. He needs to be heroic if he wants to continue his ascent among the all-timers. 

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

• If the Thunder revert to their regular season identity and choke away three straight games with a trip to the Finals on the line, there's still the slightest possibility that Kevin Durant leaves over the next two summers. I still believe he will sign a two-year contract with a one-year opt-out to return to the Thunder and maximize his payday, but it's still a possibility, especially if Curry and the Warriors catch fire and blow them out of the next two games (by the way, that's always a possibility with the Warriors).
• If this Thunder team wins the title, it will be among the greatest postseason accomplishments in NBA history. They will have taken down the Spurs, Warriors, and LeBron in three consecutive series. That's a 67-win team, a 73-win team, and the greatest player of the current generation. The only team it's comparable to is the 1995 Rockets, the only team to have to play four 50-win teams on the way to the title. Those are close, but I would lean towards the Thunder due to the dominance they displayed over two of the best regular season teams ever.
• Russell Westbrook has harnessed his world-class athleticism and crazy competive motor and combined them with cerebral playmaking and decision-making. Ever since they were blown out by the Spurs in Game 1, he's made the decision to get other guys involved and look for his shot in the best situations, like transition or big-man match-ups. He's also been very good on Curry defensively, part of which comes from him cutting down on his defensive lapses and part of which is credited to his relentlessness in all areas of the game wearing Curry (and the rest of the Warriors) down. I though this was another good point from Simmons; Westbrook is always going at the opposition, and it has an effect on a team when they always have to worry about a guy coming at them with everything he has. Even when they make a shot he's getting the ball and coming right back at them down the other end. My point is that Westbrook has become the player many wanted him to be, and he and Durant remind me of Shaq and Kobe back in the day in that it's really hard to beat a team with two of the best three players in the league. That's incredible.
• A title would give Kevin Durant historical significance above anything else. Durant is already one of the best scorers the game has ever seen, but his growth during this playoff run has been awesome. Not only has he dropped forty a few times this playoffs, he's using his length to rebound, defend the rim, and be the secret defensive weapon against Curry. Coach Billy Donovan has stuck Durant on Draymond Green so that Durant can switch on the Curry-Green pick-and-roll and effectively stifle that play's effectiveness. Durant has stepped up his overall game throughout the playoffs and has been a leader of the Thunder's renaissance. We might be seeing him climb the ranks of all-time players into the top-20, especially if he can finish with a title over his long-time nemesis LeBron.
• On the flip-side, losing a 3-1 lead in the Conference Finals would add to the legendary missed chances the Thunder have sustained since the James Harden trade. In the summer of 2012, everyone thought that the young Thunder, coming off a Finals appearance, were set for the future. A few months later, James Harden was traded. The next playoffs, Russell Westbrook was hurt in a collision with Patrick Beverly in the first round, and was lost for the playoffs. The Thunder lost in the next round to Memphis. The next year, they ran into a ball-moving, retribution-seeking buzzsaw that was the 2014 Spurs. And then Durant got hurt last year and the Thunder missed the playoffs. The constant missed opportunities have colored the public opinion of the Thunder to the point that I was surprised at how well they have played with everything on the line this playoffs. If they blow another chance, this being the worst yet, would be devastating to the franchise. It's possible that the group would disband and we would lose an incredible team in a similar way to the 1990's Magic. The Thunder are right in the moment for historical significance in the NBA, and now it's on them. What are they going to do?

So here's the point: It's fun to have these subplots going on in your head as you watch a game. It gives the game higher stakes and you're damn sure that the guys out on the floor are thinking about it, too. The energy that is leading up to this game is real, it's legitimate, it's palpable. This game is important. It's an event. It matters. And when the clock hits triple zeros tonight, some sort of history is going to be made.