Thunder `fought hard all year' but suffer cruel fate
Chris Paul held it together for one question. But then came a question about this Thunder team and what it accomplished this season, first before the pandemic pause, then in the bubble and into the playoffs. Thinking about it made Paul's emotions spill out.
He paused for several seconds, then finally spoke with his voice wavering.
“It's tough,” he said. “We fought hard all year.”
He bent over in his seat, his knees on his elbows and his cap hiding his face.
“We obviously had a lot of doubters,” Paul said, “but we didn't doubt ourselves. We didn't give a damn about anybody's predictions going into any series.
“In any game, we expected to win.”
In Game 7, they almost did. Rockets 104, Thunder 102. On a night the Thunder faced the toughest of circumstances — win or go home — it rose to the challenge. It got great play from Paul, who became just the second Thunder to have a triple double in the playoffs with 19 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists. It got out-of-this-world play from Lu Dort, who scored a career high 30 points, the most points by a player 21 or younger in an NBA Game 7, and bested LeBron (27) and Kobe (25) in the process. It pushed James Harden, largely thanks to Dort's defense, into one of his worst games as a Rocket.
The Thunder took punches, got knocked to the canvas, then got up and landed its own roundhouses.
But in the last three seconds of the game, Houston made enough plays to win.
Harden blocked a Dort three.
Robert Covington hit a free throw.
And Russell Westbrook and P.J. Tucker disrupted the Thunder's final inbounds play.
Like that, the Thunder was done.
Cruel game, this basketball.
“That's a tough one,” Paul said. “We had our chances.”
Paul has been on this side of playoff disappointment before. His postseason woes are well documented. How long it took him to make a conference finals. How he has never been to an NBA Finals.
Truth be told, he has played on teams that had a much better chance than this Thunder team did of making a deep playoff run. And yet, he has rarely shown as much emotion as he did after Wednesday's loss.
Part of it might have been the stress of these last few months. He helped oversee the NBA's return to play after the shutdown, pouring so much time and energy into those efforts. Then he left his family almost two months ago to go into the bubble in Florida. Then a little over a week into the playoffs, he helped guide the players through a three-day stoppage to address racial injustice and social issues.
All the while, Paul was playing really high level basketball.
His best ball came in the last two games of this series against the Rockets. On the heels of a 34-point blowout loss in Game 5, he rallied both his teammates and himself. He convinced young guys like Dort and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Darius Bazley that they weren't done yet, then Paul went out and proved it.
Twenty-eight points
in Game 6 including 15 points and zero turnovers in the fourth quarter.
Then in Game 7, with the Rockets trying to get some separation early in the fourth quarter, Paul rebuffed them. He hit Dort on a nifty backdoor cut for an easy basket, then on the next possession with the Rockets slow in transition, Paul hit a three from the top of the key.
Houston called a quick timeout, and as Paul walked toward the Thunder bench, he turned his index finger in a circle.
A sign to keep going. And his team responded. “Chris is a really great leader,” Dort said. “He's really vocal with us, and I thought he did a really great job the whole time in the bubble just leading us.
“I mean, he's just a great person.”
The narrative around Paul changed so much this season. He went from everything that was wrong in Houston to everything that was right in Oklahoma City. He bonded with the Thunder's young core, but he also built a strong connection with other veterans. Paul recently called Dennis Schröder one of his all-time favorite teammates.
We don't normally think about pro athletes building tight bonds, but clearly, that is what happened on this Thunder team.
“I think as time goes by and the rawness of this goes off, I think those guys will
understand what a great team they were,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan said. “Having nine new guys and not knowing about the chemistry and how they would gel and mesh … the way they kind of complemented each other, the way they sacrificed for each other, the way they played for each other, it was really a great, great group.
“It's unfortunate it had to come to an end like this because I think we did a lot of things to put ourselves in a position to win.
And when it ended on a night they played so well for so long, it left players with red eyes and teary moments.
“We needed one more play,” Donovan said.
The Rockets got it instead. Houston goes on.
OKC goes home.
Cruel game.
“They deserved to win,” Paul said of his teammates. “They did everything they were supposed to do.”
What happened Wednesday doesn't diminish all that the Thunder did, making the playoffs when few thought it would, pushing the Rockets to the final seconds of the final game of the series. But none of that makes what happened in Game 7 hurt any less.