Thunder Ready To Flip Series
By Randy Renner
At the Thunder's shootaround today players and head coach Scott Brooks said all the right things, at least sounding like a group that has its act together.
"We win tonight and we can flip the series," Kendrick Perkins said. "We go back home with the series tied 2-2 and we have two of the last three at home."
"We don’t wanna dig ourselves a 3-1 hole, we’re excited to play and we know it’s gonna be a tough game it’s one of these games that we have to win so we gotta come out with that mindset," said Thunder superstar Kevin Durant.
"We just have to focus on what we have to take care of on the court and everything else is gonna take care of itself."
The focus has sometimes wavered this week to an off-court issue about the future of head coach Scott Brooks. While Russell Westbrook was accusing the media of trying to pull the team apart, Westbrook's own brother Ray was apparently trying to do exactly that.
He had tweeted during Thursday night's loss that the Thunder "need a new coach ASAP" On Friday Westbrook said he had taken care of the issue and that he and Brooks don't have any problems.
Today the talk was all business.
“It’s just playing our game,” Westbrook said. “That’s the biggest thing. Just coming out and doing what we need to do to win the game.”
"We know exactly what they do and vice-a-versa,” Brooks said. “We’ve been battling each other for three games. The fourth game is tonight and we have a few things that we want to do better. We have a few things that we want to do better on both ends. Defensively we want to make it tough on them taking their post shots.”
"You’re going to go through adversity during the game," Durant pointed out, "but we have to persevere through it all. We have to play with a lot of intensity and a lot of heart and play together.”
Durant even said being down in the series might actually help.
"It’s kinda like your back is against the wall when you’re down and that’s when you see who you are and what you’re made of. It’s easy to play together, it’s easy to come out excited, it’s easy to come out with a sense of urgency when you’re up 3-0, or 2-1 or 2-0 in a series," he said.
"But once you’re down it really shows what type of team you have what type of organization you have because everybody’s supposed to come together when you’re down when you’re backs are against the wall, especially on the road down 2-1."
He's right about that, tonight we'll see what kind of team the Thunder are.