English: Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunders at ARCO Arena. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Kevin Durant was not just happy to make it to his first
NBA Finals. He wanted to win, as he made abundantly clear after it was all over. He had done the things champions do. He had not just worked incredibly hard in the lockout, but rallied his teammates to do the same. He had embraced the
NBA's smallest market. He had resolutely not caved to media pressure to criticize his teammate
Russell Westbrook for shooting too much. He had stared down the barrel of an 0-2 hole against the formidable San Antonio Spurs. He had put up huge playoff numbers -- 28.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.2 blocks, 1.7 steals, 52 percent field goal shooting, 37 percent 3-point shooting, 86 percent from the line -- befitting the best scorer in basketball.
And it did not end, as he had intended, with a ring.
Durant says he was surprised how emotional Game 5's 121-106 loss to the Miami Heat made him. He said he could even see real strain in the faces of his parents. And he says he will take that experience and change … just about nothing.
And that's exactly how it should be.
"Whether we would have won or lost," Durant said, "I was going to come back this summer, everybody was going to come back this summer, and work extremely hard, win or lose."
Music to the ears of anyone who wants to see the
Oklahoma City Thunder win -- because when you have things working like they are working in Oklahoma City, it's not about how mighty an improvement you can make to open the championship window. The window is wide open. Now it's about how long it can stay that way, how many consecutive days you can keep doing the right thing.
Just keeping it together, for these Thunder, will be enough, and Durant isn't making the slightest hints about flipping the script.
"I wouldn't want to play with anybody else," he says. "I wouldn't want to play for any other city. I'm just blessed to be part of this organization, and hopefully we can get back."
A scene that says a lot about the Thunder franchise: In the hotel gym the other day, a player was being coached -- loudly, boisterously, and with much loving attention -- through a workout. He didn't have one member of the Thunder training staff working with him, he had three. After all, it's the middle of the NBA Finals.
But here's the thing: The player was backup point guard
Eric Maynor, who isn't set to play again until late summer after missing all but nine games of the season with a torn ACL. Even a player who didn't matter at all to the Finals was a huge priority in the Finals.
Maynor, who played 22 games with the
Utah Jazz before joining the Thunder midway through his rookie season, says he can't imagine why anyone would ever want to play for another team, this being one that really cares about him as a person more than getting a win.
Who'd want to change that?
"Aggressively boring."
That's the phrase that has been rolling around in my head as the Finals coaches, Miami's
Erik Spoelstra and Oklahoma City's
Scott Brooks, meet the media day after day.
Russell Westbrook has been about as electric as a player can be in these Finals -- a walking storyline. Watch him fly around the court with an invisible jetpack, embarrassing all who would defend him. Watch him make critical errors, embarrassing himself. They say
LeBron is "Hollywood as hell," but this guy is all plot.
And yet, to any question about Westbrook, Brooks rolls into a canned ham of a story about how he loves Russell, how Russell never misses a practice and about how the team would never be where it is without him.
Brooks and Spoelstra are as quotable as monks, and it goes beyond not wanting to provide bulletin board material to the other team.
By and large, what both coaches have to say is what Durant is already living: Do the right thing, even when it seems like the wrong thing. Eventually you'll probably get good results.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/46332/durant-thunder-still-right-on-time
