{"id":14971,"date":"2011-04-16T11:40:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T16:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14971"},"modified":"2011-04-16T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T16:44:08","slug":"nba-playoff-preview-4-oklahoma-city-thunder-vs-5-denver-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-playoff-preview-4-oklahoma-city-thunder-vs-5-denver-nuggets-14971\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Playoff Preview: (4) Oklahoma City Thunder vs. (5) Denver Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thunder Odds to win Championship:\u00a0 10\/1<\/strong>
\nNuggets Odds to win Championship:\u00a0 40\/1<\/strong>
\nThunder Odds to win West:\u00a0 5\/1<\/strong>
\nNuggets Odds to win West:\u00a0 16\/1<\/strong>
\nSeries Line:\u00a0 OKC -240, DEN +200<\/strong><\/p>\n

Game 1 Line:\u00a0 OKC -5.5<\/strong>
\nGame 1 Total:\u00a0 199<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Westbrook has emerged as a true star in the NBA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Odds and bets taken from Bodog.<\/p>\n

For a matchup of a 4 seed against a 5 seed, the predictions could not be more lopsided.\u00a0 All four of Yahoo’s sports experts (Adrian Wojnarowski, Marc J. Spears, the Ball Don’t Lie blog owner, and Johnny Ludden) picked Oklahoma City, and no one predicted more than 6 games for the series.\u00a0 Spears and the Ball Don’t Lie blogger of Yahoo both predicted the Thunder would win in 5 games.<\/p>\n

Why are people writing off the Nuggets?\u00a0 They finished with a 50-32 record.\u00a0 They did win only 3 of their last 6 games, but overall played well since the Melo Trade.\u00a0 Galinari has picked up where he left off in New York and has averaged 14.7 points per game as a nugget.\u00a0 Ty Lawson absolutely exploded after Billups was traded, including the game he hit 10 threes in 10 attempts, before missing a final 11th attempt.\u00a0 It was an NBA record.\u00a0 Lawson’s stats for the season are modest, 11.7 ppg, 4.7 apg, and 40.4% from three, but it was after Billups left that Lawson began having the big games.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets also acquired Raymond Felton, whose stats dropped off radically from his stats in New York.\u00a0 In his 21 games as a Nugget, Felton averaged only 11.5 pionts per game and 6.5 assists per game, though he did shoot solid percentages (43% FG, 45.9% three).<\/p>\n

Wilson Chandler has continued to provide versatile play and good defense.\u00a0 But his numbers have went down since leaving D’Antoni and New York behind, too.\u00a0 As a Nugget, Chandler is averaging 12.5 points per game, 1.1 blocks, and 5 boards.\u00a0 As a Knick, he was at 16.4 points per game, and 5 boards.\u00a0 The cause, however, is not just less shots.\u00a0 He’s shooting 4.2% worse from the field than he did in New York and his minutes have gone down from 34 a game to 30.<\/p>\n

It would be safe to say that the Nuggets lack any stars.\u00a0 Nen\u00ea is very good and Lawson may emerge as one of the better young point guards in the game, but by losing Melo the Nuggets lost their closer.\u00a0 They now have no one worthy of isolating at the end of quarters and games.<\/p>\n

Quite the opposite can be said of Oklahoma City.\u00a0 The Thunder have the obvious choice in Durant, but Westbrook has almost emerged as a “1 A” option, and the 6’3″ point guard is averaging 21.9 points per game, largely in part due to the fact that Westbrook is getting to the line over 2.5 times more per game than last season and is shooting a career high 84.2% from the line.\u00a0 It represents 2.5 points per game just in free throws alone.\u00a0 That, combined with the fact he is now attempting 17 shots per game, means opposing teams have to worry about two players going off, Durant AND Westbrook.<\/p>\n

Durant has already proven himself to be one of the best offensive players in the last decade.\u00a0 He’s so natural on the court and is able to rise up and shoot over most defenders, using his 6’10” lanky frame to reach over defenders and hit a variety of mid range jumpers.\u00a0 There have been comparisons of Durant to Gervin, and while it may be a bit premature, it seems like an accurate projection.\u00a0 Over Gervin’s 13 career seasons (6 of which were spent in the ABA), he averaged 25.1 points per game and 26.2 over his 7 NBA seasons.\u00a0 If Durant can play to age 33, there’s a good chance he’ll surpass Gervin in the annals of great small forwards.<\/p>\n

Ultimately it will be the play of Durant and Westbrook that sew the body bags of the Nuggets.\u00a0 The duo is difficult to contain, and if one is held to an off game, the other usually explodes.\u00a0 Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins provide a lot of interior toughness that will be good to matchup with Nen\u00ea, Shelden Williams, and Chris “Birdman” Andersen, Kenyon Martin, and Al Harrington.\u00a0 While neither team relies very heavily on their big men for scoring production (though the Nuggets do often run sets for Nen\u00ea, as he averaged 14.5 ppg), the interior play – rebounding in particular – will prove to be crucial in this series.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City closed out the season series with a 104-89 win over the Nuggets and they lost the previous matchup, 3 nights prior by 7.\u00a0 The Nuggets did win the first game, but that was prior to the drastic altering of their team in the Carmelo Anthony trade.\u00a0 In the two games without Anthony, Durant went for 28 points and 32 points.\u00a0 If the rest of the Thunder contribute offensively, it will only take Durant scoring his season average for the Thunder to wrap this series up and take it home.\u00a0 The series could be a coming out party for Ty Lawson, who will get a chance to put his big game scoring to the test when it counts most.<\/p>\n

Series Prediction:\u00a0 Oklahoma City, 4 games to 2<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thunder Odds to win Championship:\u00a0 10\/1 Nuggets Odds to win Championship:\u00a0 40\/1 Thunder Odds to win West:\u00a0 5\/1 Nuggets Odds to win West:\u00a0 16\/1 Series Line:\u00a0 OKC -240, DEN +200 Game 1 Line:\u00a0 OKC -5.5 Game 1 Total:\u00a0 199   Odds and bets taken from Bodog. For a matchup of a 4 seed against a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[526,1193,399,3298,216],"class_list":["post-14971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-kevin-durant","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-russell-westbrook","tag-ty-lawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14971"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14975,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14971\/revisions\/14975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}