What will the Spurs do to stop the Thunder in Game 6?
Written by Adrian Gregory Glover // June 6, 2012 // NBA, News // No comments
OKLAHOMA CITY –After appearing broken, the Oklahoma City Thunder have a opportunity to put the cherry on top of their entrance into the NBA Finals.
A Game 6 win tonight, will give them almost a week to rest before the league finals start on June 12.
There is no win that is truly a foregone conclusion but the Thunder are one of the hardest teams in the NBA to defeat on its own turf.
The term changing of the guard has been used to describe how the Thunder have become the West’s new gatekeepers.
In the quarterfinals they swept the world champs, in the semifinals they tossed the Lakers out of the boat and in the conference finals they just might run down the number one-seeded Spurs.
Where this coronation ceremony could go wrong is if OKC takes a Greg Popovich team for granted.
They may be down but they are not out and the Spurs are painfully aware that all they need is just one win to send this thing back home for a deciding Game 7.
Popovich consistently makes adjustments. One of which was sending their heralded sixth man Manu Ginobili into Game 5’s starting rotation.
Manu played up to his ability, but his insertion threw off the team’s overall rotation and as a result seemingly threw the Spurs out-of-whack.
What adjustments will the Spurs make tonight?
That’s hard to say, they may come back out and try to coax key members of the Thunder into early foul trouble as they did in Game 5.
More concretely, they will most likely try to continue to stifle Russell Westbrook, concede Kevin Durant and now try to push James Harden off the map.
If you let the big men bang inside you have to trust that Tim Duncan will handle Kendrick Perkins.
If that does not happen, yes this one is over.
For the Thunder, they just have to be themselves and they should be fine. To be themselves they have to be the best of themselves.
Their starting five is the best in the NBA across the board and their sixth man also owns his real estate.
If they come out and fire away, get their crowd into the game and just focus on maintaining their tempo, this will be over in six.
