The Oklahoma City Thunder put the Golden State Warriors on notice with a 108-102 Game 1 victory Monday—a loud, startling bulletin proclaiming the Western Conference Finals will be unlike any series the Dubs have yet played.
With a second-half defensive screw-turning nobody thought would carry over from their previous series, the Thunder limited Golden State to just 42 points in the final 24 minutes and 14 in the fourth quarter. Both were lows for the Warriors this postseason, per Warriors PR, and the lack of scoring made Russell Westbrook's surge in the third quarter (when he scored 19 of his game-high 27 points) stand out as the deciding factor.
After trailing by 13 at the break, the Thunder continued trusting their big lineups against the threat of the Warriors' small-ball units. They also switched aggressively on defense as the game wore on—to the point Golden State players eventually started screening their own men to free up teammates.
Yeah, adjustments happen at hyper speed in the Western Conference Finals.
The upshot was that possessions like this, from the Warriors' dominant fir ...
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Article written by Grant Hughes
Thunder Force Warriors into Unfamiliar Territory with Game 1 Win
May 16th, 2016 by Grant Hughes Leave a reply »
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