Could the cap situation force Perkins to Miami???

[SmushedPennies]

That's what I was hoping you were using. They are a very potent team offensively, and its hard to sustain the same level of O over a full season that you might over the 5 most important games of your life, though. Not saying we shut them down, but we played solid D on Harden, and even Durant at times. Westbrook often cut into us, which was probably "water finding its level" (-Fiorentino) after he'd played terribly against us in all 4 regular season games of the Big 3 era.

I'd be interested in seeing their rating against SA compared to us, because I think its more fair to compare how we did against them to other playoff teams as opposed to a full season. I don't have a strong opinion on one side or the other, just curiosity. I guess I have a hard time believing our defense didn't play a fairly large role in defeating them. I don't know if there's one single metric that can tell us this though. As I watch NBATV replays of the series, the eye test tells me it did.

[LikeABosh]

I'd be interested in seeing their rating against SA compared to us, because I think its more fair to compare how we did against them to other playoff teams as opposed to a full season.

Sure, here ya go:
SA: +13.6 in 6 games.
LA: +14.8 in 5 games
Dal: +10.34 in 4 games

We were much better than SA and LA, but oddly enough, the team that did the best job of defending OKC was the team that didn't even win a game in the series.

I don't have a strong opinion on one side or the other, just curiosity. I guess I have a hard time believing our defense didn't play a fairly large role in defeating them. I don't know if there's one single metric that can tell us this though. As I watch NBATV replays of the series, the eye test tells me it did.

Oh, it played a role. But I'm talking about how we beat OKC. We beat every team because of our defense, but why OKC? This comes back around to Perkins/Ibaka being useless. They were a utility in the Western conference, but as soon as we played small ball they weren't very effective since perkins is only good for guarding a guy like bynum and ibaka is a natural rim protector who got stuck trying to guard a 3pt. shooter in battier

[SmushedPennies]

Too small of a sample size to call it odd, really. Anything can happen in a series.

And I guess the full picture indicates their bigs were useless against the style we implemented. By this token you might be able to say we won the series because of Spo. I guess my point is, and we seem to agree on this, there's no single reason one team beats another in a series, unless its something like a star player being out. They did still go small a lot against us, if I recall, with Durant at the 4 and Ibaka at C.

[EscapoTHB]

OKC is unlucky that Harden wasn't a FA this summer. After that finals I don't think anyone would have offered him the max. He looked terrible. And choked big time.