Friends and fellow Thunder fans, it’s my honor to bring you the first official ThunderCast of the 2010 off season. And while it’s sad to see one season end, Michael, Blayne, and I are already looking forward to keeping you up to date on the draft and free agent mania through the summer. For now, though, I wanted to take a look back and share some thoughts about the Thunder’s first ever postseason series.

As the regular season wound down, I was watching the Western conference playoff standings closely hoping the Thunder would draw the Suns or Mavericks in the first round. I just felt that we matched up better against them, and that our style would give them the most problems. And that’s true; we do match up better. Especially based on what we saw from the Spurs-Mavs series, I think we could have advanced as the 7th seed. But as the 6 games with the Lakers unfolded, I realized that I was wrong to lament our draw of the 8th seed. Because it wasn’t bad luck; it may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to the Thunder in their first taste of the postseason.

Why you ask? Please allow me to illustrate with an example. When I was but a lad, I passed many an hour playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 with 3, yes THREE, friends all at one time! When I played the game alone, I took the normal approach. I started on Easy difficulty, finished the game, then played on Medium, and so on. Eventually I reached the Hard difficulty level, but by that time I’d already seen every level at least twice, and the game wasn’t as fun when I couldn’t just take out a room full of baddies with nothing but a handgun and the ability to run laterally. By contrast, a friend of mine got the game and just started playing on Hard without hesitation. Sure, it was tedious and difficult, and sometimes not even fun. After all, dying 20 times on the first level isn’t my idea of a good time. But in multiplayer, who do you think dominated the game? It was always my friend who only knew two outcomes to any conflict: to make rapid, accurate shots or die.

I’m sure you believe, as I do, that our Thunder team is only going to get better. In fact, Let’s suppose they will improve year-over-year for the next 3 to 5 years. Then that means that this team was actually the weakest it’s going to be over the next 4 years. Secondly, remember that our expectations for this team soared from 30 to 40 to 50 wins in a matter of a few weeks. Unless you actually came into this season expecting the Thunder to win the championship, then you should consider everything that happens in the playoffs to be serendipitous surprise.

With that in mind, I contend that rather than regretting our match up with the Lakers, the worst thing that could have happened is if we had missed our chance to play them at our weakest. Having advantageous match ups is great because you can play directly to your strengths and expect victory. However, that doesn’t challenge you to find the limits of your capability. I don’t think any other team would have pushed us so hard. I believe the absolute worst outcome of the playoffs would have been losing to Dallas in the first round, say because Nowitski happened to outgun Durant 4 times out of 7 in spite of sloppy defense by the Mavericks. We might have left that experience saying, “Boy, we just need to keep doing what we’re doing, just doing it better.” But we would have remained completely in the dark about where our weaknesses are at this critical time in our development.

Simply put, we want to be the best. That means we have to beat the best. And, I say, if you’re gonna lose, lose to the best. Let’s take a look at just a few of the extremely valuable lessons we got to learn this year as a result of this matchup. First the good stuff.

First of all, we found out that we can win in the playoffs. As Cubs fans, Michael and I have endured watching them lose 8 consecutive playoff games dating back to 2003, and we can tell you, it’s excruciating. What a relief to have a home town team not burdened with psychological baggage, but full of unlimited potential. This team is anything but cursed, in fact, we’re blessed. As we stated on this show in Episode 31, we can beat anyone, but we confirmed that we can beat anybody even when it counts. People didn’t give us a chance, but they were wrong. We had a chance, and a very good one, to the surprise of everyone but us.

We also learned a lot about our incredible fan base. The loudest in the NBA, and wildest and craziest in the country. The national TV announcers could not say enough about the atmosphere in the Ford Center, the city, and really the entire state. Also, I just want to award an honorary Thunder Clap to all of you fans at game 6, who stood and cheered both teams after the game. At a moment when, I admit, I would have felt like sending a jumbo pretzel flying at Pau Gasol, you sent exactly the right message: that we appreciate them not just for their amazing talents, but we admire their character, and the professional work ethic they bring every day to their passion, which also happens to be their career. I hope every player who saw that got that message loud and clear, and I hope some may have a better understanding of what a privilege it is to be part of the Oklahoma City Thunder organization.

But those lessons learned were hardly the most valuable. The old saying goes, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”, but if there is a basketball corollary, it would be “Know your strengths well, but your weaknesses even better.”

We all know that KD is the real deal, and has all the tools to be a hall of fame player. He’s so good, in fact, it’s hard to see what he does wrong sometimes. But nasty defense from Kobe and Artest showed us that he still has room to improve when creating off of the dribble and hitting shots close to the basket when drawing contact. We also learned that he had become too reliant on foul shooting to be productive; against a capable defender who wasn’t often forced to foul him, he struggled. But he was so successful with catch-and-shoot moves and drawing fouls that he rarely actually had to drive to the bucket and finish. He’s going to have no problem learning to do this more. In fact, when he does, he’s going to be downright scary.

We learned that Green is a clutch but streaky scorer, which cuts both ways as a strength and weakness. He knows how to hit big shots, and how to step up when the team is really struggling. He scored 6 straight points in Game 3 when we needed him. But other times he tends to sit back. He either needs to step up to be involved all the time or we need to find a legitimate third scoring option if we will overcome a team like the Lakers.

We confirmed that we are not as strong under the basket as the Lakers. Saying this, I have to give tremendous kudos to Krstic, Collison, and Ibaka, who were given an arduous task and performed it very well. And I’m not down on these guys at all. In fact, I’m glad to have all of them. But none of them, at this point, represent an offensive low post presence. Just loads of hustle and scrappy play which seems to energize the whole team. They all need to keep working on that area.

To go with our weaknesses inside, we also need to improve from the outside. In this series, we shot under 30% in 3 of the 6 games We need our starters and bench players to have at least 5 quality 3 point shooters on the team if it will ever be a legitimate path to victory for our team like it was for the Lakers who hit 12 in game 6.

We learned that Westbrook is already mature enough to excel in the playoffs, and he’s putting things together into an amazing whole. But he needs to find ways to get every guy on the floor involved and not just KD. We have to run better offensive plays, and play less of a two man game when we need a basket. Also, his late game management needs work. This is one of those talents that doesn’t come instinctually to many, so he should really lean on coach Brooks and Mo Cheeks to help him achieve his full potential as a point guard.

Also, though he did an excellent job, coach and the players need to figure out their strategy for using time outs appropriately based on the complete game situation.

Finally, the team showed youth and inexperience, but not because they played poorly. At times in the series that played very well. I say they showed youth because they played so very differently at home and on the road. They never seemed to get their own rhythm and swagger without the energy of a crowd to reflect and relax them.

So all in all, sure, we could have played some other team in the first round and maybe even beat them. It would have felt great, but it might have been a step back rather than a potentially great leap forward to the real goal: winning the NBA championship. Let’s get all those advantageous match ups in the years when we actually SHOULD be vying for the title. When that time comes, an eighth seed and a first round exit will be a big disappointment. For this season, we were there to do our best, to learn, and to find out what we are made of. And that’s exactly what playing the Lakers allowed us to accomplish.

Plus we got a great chant out of the experience. Jazz fans, feel free to call us if you need any help with the rhythm.

What are your thoughts on this season? We’d love to hear from you any time at (405) 428-3865 or hosts@okcthundercast.com. Also leave your comments at our favorite Thunder Blog, Welcome to Loud City. Let the Thunder roll!