Staying the course
Down 13 in the third quarter, Donovan’s team didn’t panic in comeback win
The NBA’s shot clock has stayed the same at 24 seconds since 1954. But the game has changed, Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan said, describing how his team scrambled back into contention with the Rockets in the opening round of the NBA playoffs.
“A lot of these guys understand now there are so many possessions in an NBA game, and there is so much time and people are playing faster,” Donovan said. “Leads that years ago may have seemed like a really difficult hill to climb … (it’s) attainable to get back in a game — although you certainly don’t want to be down 13 points.”
That deficit hardly fazed the Thunder, however, who stormed back to snag a 117-114 victory and even the series at two wins each on Monday in the NBA bubble near Orlando, Fla. The Rockets and Thunder meet again Wednesday for the right to the driver’s seat in the series the older Rockets once led 2-0.
“No matter if you’re down 20 points or 25 points, I always believe that we can turn it around,” said Thunder guard Dennis Schroder, who came off the bench to score a team-high 30 points. “We’ve been doing it all season.”
Case in point, and when it counts most: The Rockets led 9077 with a little more than three minutes remaining in the third quarter when the Thunder caught fire, and the Rockets unraveled in their bid to grab a 3-1 advantage in the series.
“Our team all season has dealt with adversity really, really good,” said former Rockets guard Chris Paul, who led the fifth-seeded Thunder to an unexpected playoff berth against the fourth-seeded Rockets in the first season following his trade from Houston. “We just trust to keep playing and keep fighting, and we stayed in the game.”
In that three-minute stretch that played a big role in the outcome, the Rockets missed six of their last seven field goal attempts, including two misfires by Jeff Green in the lane. Throw in a steal by Paul of Eric Gordon, two 26-foot 3pointers by Darius Bazley and
Schroder and finally a highlightreel 31-footer by Schroder to end the quarter, and the teams were spiraling in opposite directions headed into the final dozen minutes.
“We’ve just got to stay the course and play to our identity,” said Donovan, who’s trying to lead the Thunder to at least the second round for the first time since his first season in 2015-16. “The way we stuck together and encouraged each other, that was really important. Adversity is going to come, it’s how you handle it as a group.”
Paul said the Thunder were encouraged at halftime after slowing the Rockets’ long-range attack — from eight 3-pointers in the first quarter to two in the second — and then the second half started.
“We were trending in the right direction,” Paul said with a slight chuckle, “and then they came out and it was wham, wham, wham.”
Plus five more whams, as the Rockets sank their first eight 3pointers of the third quarter before going cold and allowing the Thunder to enter the fourth quarter trailing only 93-92.
Paul scored 14 of his 26 points in the third quarter, and Donovan said he was glad he chose to stick with his veteran point guard after nearly resting him a little more in preparation for the final quarter.
“He has a way of stopping runs and finding ways to generate good shots,” Donovan said of Paul, 35. “He really changed the (course), and I let him play a little bit longer in the third. I just felt like he had gotten into a rhythm. We were in a little bit of a hole, and he does a good job of settling our team.”
When the Rockets sprang to the 90-77 lead and a 3-1 series lead seemed imminent, Donovan said the Thunder resisted the urge to abandon their plan, knowing it’s a different, faster-paced game than in decades and even recent years past.
“The (Rockets) got on a little flurry there to start the third quarter, where it seemed like everything they threw up was going in,” Donovan said. “But I thought our guys’ effort and energy to contest shots was great. Our effort and energy to scramble and rotate and rebound really helped us get back in the game.”