Derek Fisher has learned a lot in 14 career postseason trips, but the best lesson he’s garnered is the importance of keeping an even keel.
Following a loss in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday night, the Thunder head back to Oklahoma City for tonight’s Game 3 in an 0-2 hole. But Derek maintains that nothing about the team’s approach has changed. They enter Game 3 ready to win, just as they would have had they been victorious in the first two games of the series.
"Had we won both games in San Antonio we wouldn’t have come in here saying ‘We’re going to lose tomorrow and we’re worried about the next game after that.’ The idea would still be to win the next game," he said. "So even though we’re down 0-2, it really should not change our mentality."
Though they’re down 0-2 in the West Finals, the Thunder aren’t panicked (Getty Images).
Derek’s mentality is one that he has cultivated over his 16 seasons in the NBA on the road to five championships. But his passion and desire have always been instilled in him.
He sees that same fire in his teammates, so it’s easy for him to address them about have a singular focus entering one game rather than dreaming about the different scenarios associated with overcoming an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-seven series.
"They won their first two games at home and for our team, we obviously feel that we’re capable of winning on our home court against anybody that we play against," Fish said. "But we’re not trying to lump Game 3 and Game 4 together…. We have an opportunity tomorrow night to go out and do it. That’s what we should plan to do."
Derek has some pointed experience in this particular situation. In NBA postseason history, just 14 teams have come back from an 0-2 hole in the postseason. Fish was on two of those 14 teams. Most recently, he helped Utah come back from down 2-0 in the 2007 conference quarterfinals. But it’s Derek’s experience against this very Spurs team that he draws from the most.
It was just eight years ago when Fish and the Lakers faced an identical situation against the Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals. After losing two straight on the road, the Lakers came back to win two straight at home. They then took Game 5 in San Antonio on Derek’s 0.4 buzzer beater and closed the series six with a fourth straight victory. D-Fish said it may sound cliché, but the key to the comeback was that singular focus on each individual game.
"We did not assume that we would win four games in a row, which is basically what we ended up doing in that series. We really did just focus on winning Game 3," he said. "That win turned into an understanding of what it would take to win and then you win the next game and just keep playing from there."
ROLL WITH IT
For the Thunder to start that snowball rolling in Game 3 on Thursday night, they’ll have to put an end to a Spurs winning streak that April 12, 20 consecutive wins, including 10 in the postseason.
Fish called the Spurs one of the best offensive teams in the league and lauded them for doing what they do well, but he does believes some adjustments can be made for the Thunder to limit the effectiveness of San Antonio’s offensive attack.
"There are some breakdowns that we’re having on our end, where we can improve and do some things better, understanding we’re not always going to do it perfectly, but just playing with effort and passion and leaving everything on the floor. That makes up for a lot of
[the imperfections]."
San Antonio’s pick-and-roll has presented a problem for OKC (Getty Images).
One thing Derek believes the Thunder can do better is defending San Antonio’s pick-and-roll. Many teams in the league run the pick-and-roll offense, a transition that Derek says began several years ago, but has really taken flight over the last two or three seasons. And for a team to be successful at the championship level, they must learn how to corral it."It’s a pick-and-roll league, and it’s your ability to guard the pick-and-roll, and impact the ball, and keep teams from getting penetration that really determine your success," he said. "Pick and roll defense is about all five guys, not just the guy guarding the ball and not just the big guy setting the screen. But all five guys being able to shrink the floor and really play together as a team on the defensive end. That’s something we’ll have to continue to emphasize and demand from ourselves.
"The demands are high, but that’s what this business requires and that’s what it’s going to take from our team to find some success against this team or against any team we play against. It’s not a secret. We just have to figure it out."
Few in the league run the pick-and-roll quite like the Spurs do with the smart and quick Tony Parker running the show. San Antonio has used the aggressive offensive attack to roll up more than 100 points in 18 of the 20 games during their win streak.
They scored a postseason best 120 in Game 2 and Derek knows the Thunder will have to keep San Antonio below those numbers to stand any chance of success in this series. That’s why he isn’t concerned about the 41 percent Oklahoma City’s offense shot in Game 2. A Thunder win in Game 3 has to start with better defense.
"It still comes back to our ability to defend. Whether we’re shooting 41 percent or not, if they’re shooting 50-plus percent, it’s irrelevant," he said. "Regardless of the percentage, we feel we’ve scored enough points in the first two games to give ourselves a chance to win. But defensively we haven’t done the job. A lot of this is not so much about what other teams are doing. It’s not about what the Spurs are doing. It’s about us and what we can do and need to do on our end to be successful."
Derek and the Thunder remain confident in their ability to execute (Getty Images).
But Derek says the Thunder have not lost a shred of confidence and to a man, they understand what they need to do. It’s simply comes down to putting the right pieces in the right places and executing to win."We’re not down ourselves," he said. "We’re obviously disappointed. We don’t like to lose. But we still feel good about our ability to follow our game plan, do some of the things we need to do, make some adjustments and give ourselves a chance to win Game 3."
NEXT UP
As the Thunder closed practiced on Wednesday and gathered around for one last huddle, one more thing needed to be addressed: desire.As Derek pointed out to his teammates, maintaining that desire over the course of the series can be just as important as any adjustment they might make in their gameplan.
"You can talk about x’s and o’s and adjustments and rotations and all those things. But at the end of the day, sometimes you just have to want it," he said. "How you define that and how you lay that out as a game plan, I don’t know. But when you want it bad enough, you figure it out. We have to want it bad enough come tomorrow night to figure it out."
Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs from Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City tips at 8 p.m. CDT and can be seen nationally on TNT.
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