But Durant sat there, with a hand over his face, and answered every question that was shot at him — even the ones that visibly brought up the memories of the painful collapse.
“This is basketball, man,” Durant said. “Our youth has nothing to do with what we were doing on the floor. We’ve showed we can play on this level. They played good defense. We missed some shots. Our youth has nothing to do with it.”
Durant didn’t have the type of game he had wanted — or expected — from himself in Game 5. He had 29 points, but didn’t score a point in the final 10 minutes, including overtime. He tallied 15 rebounds as he battled Tyson Chandler in the paint, but he was also one turnover away from a different kind of triple-double.
“I was trying to play with so much force and play so hard,” Durant said. “Early on, I was getting the ball where I wanted to and they were just playing straight-up defense. But later on, I got the ball where I wanted to and I seen three or four guys around me, and I had to make a pass. Some passes were tipped. A few of those, my swipe move, I didn’t get the foul and I got the turnover.”
Dallas made the decision early on that Durant was not going to beat them.
“The guys that are getting the ball a lot are facing tremendous pressure,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “We’re game planning like crazy for the guy. We’re chasing him, we’re double-teaming him out to half-court a lot of the time. He’s receiving a lot of attention.”
One thing is for sure, Durant will see the same attention tonight in Game 5 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. It will be up to coach Scott Brooks to figure out a way to get his star the ball in easier scoring positions.
What hurts the situation even more is that Durant doesn’t have to look too far to see how a superstar is supposed to play in the clutch. The Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki has nearly put to rest the talk of him being soft in the postseason with the way he has bullied Thunder defenders throughout the series. He’s scored 40 points or more twice. Dallas won both of those games.
But it’s more than Nowitzki outplaying Durant. It’s the Mavericks’ supporting cast outplaying the Thunder, especially late in games.
“He is a tough cover,” Westbrook said. “The way he knocks down shots, we couldn’t double because of his shooters they have around him. It was tough.”
If the Thunder want their season to continue for at least one more game, they will have to go on the road, in front of a hostile crowd, and show they have learned from their most recent failure.
“I think we can,” Thabo Sefolosha said. “We have bounced back a lot of times. We are playing against a very good team. We have to make some adjustments and keep fighting. It’s not over yet. We have a lot of basketball to play and we have to keep pushing.”
When the season started, the Thunder had championship aspirations, despite their age. Those aspirations turned to expectations after the trade deadline brought them Kendrick Perkins.
Now Oklahoma City is just fighting to survive.
“I feel upset because I think I let (the fans) down,” Durant said. “I let the city down. I just want to come back next game and play even harder. I think I played hard, but push it up another level for these fans and try to bring it back to OKC.”
