Personally I think that OKC are one of the most overrated teams in the league...
Looking at how they got embarassed by Miami last year, I fail to see why people are worshipping like they are the Avengers or something.
When they can make it to the finals and NOT get practically swept by an injured Miami team, then I'll change my point of view.
Until then neither Durant, Westbrook, Harden or Ibaka has proven anything. The only guy on that team with real champtionship experience and mentality is Perkins, and the rests of those guys are all soft.
Only one game was a blowout in the finals... They basically ushered out a generation of contenders and Hall of Famers with Dirk and Dallas, Kobe and LA, and Duncan and San Antonio. Obviously the Lakers got better on paper, but OKC still matches up well with them.
Most teams lose in the Finals this first time getting there. Look at Miami.
You mean the previous Miami team with a young Dwayne Wade and an ageing Shaq? Because they wont he title their first time their against a very heavilly favoured Dallas team.
OKC beating Dallas was no suprise - Dallas may have been the defending champs, but thier team last season was nowhere near as strong as their champtionship team without Chandler and the other pieces they let go.
Beating the Spurs was the only impressive feat OKC achieved, and it's just because they happened to match up with them really well.
I don't care if you win games by 3 points, 5 points or 20 points - a sweep is a sweep, and what happened there was not far off a sweep.
OKC went into the finals with home court advantage - they took game 1 convincingly with a 105-94 victory, then proceeded to get swept in the final 4 games with not one of those games coming within 4 points.
G2: 100-96
G3: 91-85
G4: 104-98
G5: 121-106
When you get beaten convincingly in 4 straight games including a 15 point blowout in the last one (in which you should be the most desperate to win) then that is an embarassing loss.
OKC were one of the only teams that were 100% healthy throughout the entire regular season AND playoffs, they have been worshipped like some type of godly force (with every single person on earth putting up there as title favorites) and yet what did they prove?
Nobody in the league gave Boston a hope of winning a title, and many people expected us to lose to Atlanta in the first round - yet even with half of out team out we pushed that exact same Miami team to the brink of elimination twice and in the end the series was not decided until the final quarter of game 7.
Our old and crippled team humbled Miami and proved that they are VERY beatable, and then this highly celebrated OKC team got practically swept by them.
So right now I place OKC in the same category as Chicago, and Durant in the same category as Rose - both teams that dominate the regular season but choke in the playoffs, and both superstar players that fail to take their team over the edge when it matters most.
Why did we stick with a more talented Miami team over 7 games? Heart. It was the 'never say die' warrior attitude of guys like Pierce, KG, Rondo (and even Dooling and 'Quis).
Why did we eventually lose the series? Because Lebron put the entire Miami team on his back and took on that same warrior attitude - he decided right there and then that no matter what it took, he would not let his team lose, and he single handedly destroyed us.
Take a look at past championship teams and they pretty much all have a guy with that Warrior attitude. Boston have Pierce and KG, Lakers have Kobe, Dallas had Terry and Chandler, the old Chicago team had Jordan, the old Celtics had Bird, the underdog Pistons had an entire team of guys with warrior mentalities (Billups, Sheed, Wallace), the older Miami had Wade and the new Miami had Lebron.
It's that type of attitude that seperates the champions from the 'glamour stars', and it's that type of attitude that separates the great regular season teams (like Chicago, Indiana and OKC) from the champions (like Miami, Boston and LA).
Hell, it's the same tough mentality that allowed Philly to push Boston to the limit despite them also having a lack of talent - those guys played their hearts out every night, and they left everything on the floor.
Until somebody in OKC (outside of Perkins) takes on that warrior mentality, they will continue to fall short of expectations.
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