Chris Webber: What the Thunder Proved in Stifling the Spurs in Game 5

Chris Webber picked the Spurs to win it all before the season, and he was honest about why he might be wrong. Watching Oklahoma City handle San Antonio in game five, Webber came away impressed with the Thunder and reminded of a truth that keeps repeating in NBA history.

Champions, he said, are usually born from pain on the other side of a loss. He reached back to the Pistons going through the Celtics, the teams the Lakers had to get past, the way Shaq lost in Orlando before winning in LA and again in Miami. You see a young team on the precipice, they lose, and that defeat becomes the thing that makes the eventual breakthrough so big. San Antonio, Webber suspects, may be in exactly that spot, forced to revisit the lesson because the playoffs are a different monster.

He saw it in Wembanyama, who got pushed around and went something like four for 15. That happens to the best of them, Webber said, and the only cure is experience. Wembanyama has to learn when to plant in the paint, when to be a decoy, and when to get other guys involved, and there is no shortcut to that education. Oklahoma City, by contrast, did what champions do. They have been in this position, they understand how a series shifts, and they delivered. SGA getting teammates involved and knocking down open shots, Webber said, was just something crazy.

The conversation turned, as it has all postseason, to flopping. Webber admitted he caught heat for an earlier take where he focused on Embiid and did not see SGA as part of the problem. His updated position put the responsibility on the defense. Everybody, he insisted, needs to stand on their feet. Stop giving the referee a decision to make. He recalled coaches having players guard James Harden with their hands behind their backs, an adjustment born of necessity.

Webber's larger point was about fundamentals. He played against Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant, both of whom got to the line around 10 times a game, and the answer was always the same: stay down and make the star earn it, because your body positioning is the one thing you can control. Guards do not block jump shots, he noted, so why are they leaving their feet at all? Close out properly and you should not be close enough to foul, only close enough to bother the shot.

Do that, Webber said, and you expose the exaggeration on the other end, and the good referees will stop falling for it. He could not wait to see San Antonio go home and show what it learned.