How the Thunder's demise makes the Spurs more impressive
The story coming out of the weekend should be The Finals. It should be all about the two-time defending champion and now four-time defending East champion Heat. It should be all about the timeless Spurs, who bounced back from Serge Ibaka's triumphant return to the Thunder lineup in Games 3 and 4 with a pair of victories in Games 5 and 6 - including a Western Conference clinching win in Oklahoma City, without Tony Parker for the second half and overtime.
In typical Spurs fashion, Boris Diaw ended up being both the series' X-Factor and Game 6's leading scorer. Gregg Popovich, ladies and gentlemen.
Instead, for at least a day or so, the story seems to be the Thunder - where they went wrong and where they go from here after another failed season.
In many ways that's not fair. The Thunder won 59 games and the No. 2 seed in a ridiculously loaded Western Conference despite missing Russell Westbrook for nearly half the season. Kevin Durant had a season for the ages. They advanced to the Conference Finals for the third time in four years.
Unfortunately, fair or not, when you boast a transcendent, top-two player in the world, a superstar point guard and an All-Star quality big man, not winning a championship - let alone not even making The Finals and not getting a chance to play for a championship - is always going to be seen as a failure.
And with that, as Durant and Westbrook combined for 14 turnovers in Game 6 to match the entire Spurs team, as San Antonio's bench outscored OKC's bench 51-5, and as Scott Brooks looked as disturbingly inept to react and adjust to the game as ever, people started to consider that perhaps this Thunder window is actually starting to close.
Not in the sense that they can't compete for a championship next year and the year after - because they can and almost certainly will - but in the sense that fans, media and general observers are coming to grips with the fact that Oklahoma City's championship window is not as infinite as it was once thought to be.
As the Thunder loaded up with a once-a-generation assortment of drafted and home developed talent, improved every year and eventually made The Finals as an extremely young team, the possibilities seemed endless. Fans just assumed that a core of Durant/Westbrook/Harden/Ibaka winning a title was a matter of when, not if.
Well Harden is long gone, the Thunder are two complete seasons removed from that Finals appearance without making it back, the West is as competitive as ever, and Kevin Durant has just two years remaining on his contract while being the same length into his career - seven years - as LeBron James was at the end of his championship-less Cleveland tenure. You know, around the time when many foolishly began to label him a 'choker.'
Coming back to the Spurs, all of this sobering Thunder talk is actually what makes San Antonio's run so unbelievable and admirable. 15 years after Tim Duncan, Popovich and the Spurs made it to their first Finals, through various reloads and the additions of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and now Kawhi Leonard, the team is heading back there for the sixth time in 16 seasons and the second consecutive year in that very same, unforgiving West that the Thunder reside.
While great, star-laden teams like the Thunder and countless others have been chewed up and spit out by the reality of trying to win a championship in a 30-team league over the years, as the closing of a still comically young Thunder team's championship window potentially begins to come into view, the Spurs simply continue to defy the laws of age and basic math.