While Tulsa may be a few miles up the road, the roar from fans watching, cheering, stomping, singing, screaming in joy was heard throughout the night as the OKC Thunder devastated regional rivals to advance in tournament play.
ESPN reports: It didn’t take Kevin Durant long to summarize his feelings in beating the San Antonio Spurs in six games to move on to the Western Conference finals.
Kevin Durant
“This wasn’t our championship,” he said.
In some ways, with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s emphatic 113-99 Game 6 win, it felt like an achievement, the slaying of the mighty 67-win Spurs.
Three straight wins, each one more impressive than the last, two wins in a building where the Spurs had lost only once all season. The Thunder exorcised crunch-time demons and flashed a defensive intensity missing for most of the season, reducing the Spurs to a one-trick isolation team.
The Thunder were younger, faster, bouncier and plainly put, better.
“We met a better team,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.