Their main star, 21-year-old Kevin Durant is an agile 6’9” who is as prolific as Nowitzki in making points. And he has able backups in Russell Westbrook and James Harden. But as Game 4 of their series with Dallas showed, they need to learn to play a better endgame. In that particular game Oklahoma led by 15 points with less than four minutes left. Commonsense would have told them to slow down and orchestrate more deliberate plays. They didn’t, enabling Dallas to stage a 17-2 run to force overtime and literally steal the thunder away from them. Worse, Oklahoma’s coach did not call a single timeout during that stretch.
The same flaw – lack of endgame savvy — hounded Oklahoma in Game 5. Oklahoma was ahead – until Nowitzki buried a triple for the lead with 74 second left. The Thunder responded with a shot but the Mavs made four unanswered points after that to clinch the Western Conference title via another come from behind victory.
On the eastern side, the Bulls only managed to win Game 1. Unfortunately for them, they had to rely too much on MVP Derrick Rose in terms of offense. Most of his teammates were good in defense but were inconsistent in point production.[]
Besides, whenever Miami fielded its big players Rose, a smaller guy, would be in a quandary on who to guard. And as shown in the decisive Game 5, Chicago, like Oklahoma, lacked maturity, losing a 13-point advantage with just over three minutes to go by allowing LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to make three triples in a row.[]
