Thunder Not Happy With Latest Effort

By Randy Renner

Thunder guard Reggie Jackson wasn’t happy with how he played Thursday night in San Antonio and still wasn’t happy after watching game film with his teammates on Friday.

“Film confirmed it.  Still pretty pissed at myself, played piss poor,” Jackson admitted. “Doesn't really matter what I do offensively.  It's easy to give effort on the offensive end, but I really pride myself on being able to stop my man and didn't really do so.  It kind of trickled down, so I take the blame for that.”

For the record Jackson scored 11 points on 5-for-10 shooting and besides Kevin Durant (25 points) and Russell Westbrook (21) was the only other Thunder player to score in double figures.

But, as with most Thunder losses, the blame rests squarely with the defense and not just Jackson’s, pretty much everybody’s.

“If you want to stop your man, if you want to embarrass somebody, that's how you do it,” Jackson pointed out. “You shut them down.  That's it.  I take the blame for it.  Didn't really do it last night.  They got some easy baskets.”

Uh, yeah they did.

San Antonio shot 51.3 percent overall and 50 percent from beyond the arc and 86.7 percent at the free throw line.

All the answers the Thunder had in Games 3 and 4 didn’t work in Game 5. Gregg Popovich threw the monkey wrench of Matt Bonner into the mix in the first half and though Bonner didn’t score he made things easier for Tim Duncan down low by forcing Serge Ibaka out of the way. The in the second half Boris Diaw knocked down some threes after replacing Bonner and the rout was on.

“Obviously it wasn't our best game,” Durant said, “It wasn't close to our best game.  But we can learn from what we did wrong and try to correct it next game.”

And the Thunder have been pretty good about cleaning up their messes, even when standing at the brink of elimination. Remember the Memphis series? The Thunder won Games 6 and 7, one on the road and one at home when anything less would have ended their season.

Now against San Antonio they have to do it again.

“We know that it's a situation where we lose, we go home, and nobody wants to do that,” Durant pointed out. “So we just leave it all out there and whatever happens we live with.  Most of the time when we play extremely hard, play well, play together, we come out on top.  We just want to leave it all out there and play our game and live with what happens."