Oklahoma City Thunder: 5 Reasons They’ll Beat The Warriors
The Oklahoma City Thunder have a 3-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors, but the Western Conference Finals aren’t over yet. Here are 5 reasons they should be able to close out the defending champs.
With a single win in the next three games, the Oklahoma City Thunder will return to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012 and complete one of the most historically impressive paths to the championship series in the process.
Up 3-1 against the defending champion Golden State Warriors who won an NBA-record 73 games this season, the Thunder are on the cusp of (possibly) getting a rematch for the title belt against LeBron James. It’s probably not a coincidence that this is the first time since 2012 that OKC is fully healthy and they could be Finals-bound again.
There’s just one problem: Despite looking like the superior team for the vast majority of this series, the Thunder shouldn’t believe this Warriors team is dead until the corpse is buried and rotting in the ground.
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With two of the next three games at Oracle Arena, where the Dubs went 46-3 during the 2015-16 campaign, OKC isn’t out of the woods just yet. Golden State will come out swinging in Game 5, even if they’ve looked completely outmatched in the last two games.
That being said, even if these Warriors are as likely as any team in NBA history to become the 10th squad to overcome a 3-1 playoff deficit, it’s time to acknowledge the Thunder as the superior team in this series, as well as the underlying factors behind the drastic and sudden role reversal.
There are many reasons the Thunder should be the favorites to win this series, aside from the obvious benefit of having three cracks at a series-clinching win, or the fact that Stephen Curry is not 100 percent.
(And yes, before you protest: Steph Curry is banged up, even if OKC’s defense has been stellar and deserves credit for his struggles. The league MVP being hurt is not an excuse, which is exactly why neither Curry nor Steve Kerr will acknowledge it; if he’s healthy enough to play, there are no excuses.
But Curry is clearly not 100 percent out there, from the missed wide open jumpers to the lack of explosion around players he roasted during the regular season. The league’s most unstoppable player doesn’t suddenly become stoppable without the help of a lingering injury, even if it was the lowest grade of an MCL sprain. But I digress).
Bearing all this in mind, here are five reasons the Thunder will beat the Warriors, advancing to the 2016 NBA Finals by defeating two teams who won a combined 140 regular season games in the process.
Honorable Mention: Benching Enes Kanter
Next: No. 5