OKC does the Impossible

All season long the Spurs had been dominant at home. In fact their home record on the season was 40-1. Having just one loss at home all season. That's not even mentioning that they had a 49 game home winning streak dating back to last season. Going into this series against the Thunder the Spurs were 42-1 at home including playoffs. The Thunder won game 2 in San Antonio and won again last night in a crucial game 5. That's right, the Thunder won twice in San Antonio in a year where the Spurs were thought to be unbeatable on their home court.

This gives the Thunder a 3-2 edge going into Thursday nights game 6 against the Spurs. The Thunder really thrive off the energy of their home crowd and will look to close out this series at home. The Thunder look really focused going into game 6. Last night they did not celebrate much after the winning knowing that they have to focus on taking care of business in the next game.

USA Today

The key to the Thunder winning was their size and defense. The Thunder have been closing out on all of San Antonio's three point attempts and accepting that it may lead to an open two. So far this strategy has worked. Even though Danny Green came to life last night making 6-8 threes it did not matter make a difference. And Aldridge has really cooled off since the first two games of the series. Last night Aldridge shot 6-21 from the field. The strategy that the Thunder have deployed against Aldridge is to have Ibaka or Adams allow Aldridge to go baseline and have the weak side defender come over and help when he makes his move to go by Ibaka or Adams. This has forced Aldridge to shoot over the top of them or make a pass out of the post. The second area where the Thunder have been killing the Spurs is on the boards. The size of Adams, Kanter, and Ibaka is too much for a smaller Spurs team to get rebounds on. It is especially hard when Adams and Kanter are relentless on the glass and crash on both the offensive and defensive end. Sometimes they might not even come up with the rebound, but they are long enough to tap it out to one of the guards. The Spurs got out rebounded 54 to 36 in game 5. Another problem is that Westbrook is a very good rebounder for a guard. He had 11 rebounds last night and is a walking triple double.

The only spot where the Thunder need to improve or the Spurs need to take advantage of are the turnovers. The Thunder had 20 turnovers last night as opposed to the Spurs 8. If the Thunder can cut back on the turnovers, especially Westbrook who had 8 of them, then it is hard to see the Thunder losing game 6. Game 6 can be seen on TNT at 8:30 Thursday night. Should be one of the best games of the season.