The Day the Thunder Grew Up - Wall Street Journal (blog)

By Jeremy Gordon

Through NBA history, there have been moments when a player or team finally broke through opposition and consolidated massive potential into something portentous and unstoppable. Think of the 1990-91 Chicago Bulls, finally defeating the Detroit Pistons; of Kobe Bryant given the pieces to win a championship without Shaquille O’Neal; of LeBron James making it past the Boston Celtics last spring and emoting for the whole world to see. The waiting period for the Oklahoma City Thunder wasn’t so long, or the road so arduous. It’s hard to remember, but as recently as 2009 they were picking in the top five of the NBA lottery, and just two years ago were celebrating their first playoff berth since relocating from Seattle. But here we are, watching as the Thunder pulled off victories both literal and symbolic while ascending to the NBA finals and looking frankly terrifying in the process. As the Oklahoman’s Berry Tramel puts it, “A city that seven years ago didn’t even have a pipedream of being an NBA port now is on the league’s grandest stage.”

Associated Press

Kevin Durant, with yet another reminder for the Spurs of how old he isn’t.

Their 107-99 Game 6 victory over the San Antonio Spurs was as definitive as it gets. The Spurs started off just fine, scoring 63 points in the first half and looking ready to send the series back home. But when the game returned from halftime, it was a different story: Spurs clanging shots left and right, and the Thunder surging from the deficit behind the relentless style of play that’s characterized their playoff run. By the end, the finely-tuned Spurs offense was a disjointed, isolated shell of its previously dominant self. “Rhythm is a fickle condition, with such fine margins. For weeks, an elite baseball player will catch fire and rake. And it seems like he’ll never lose that timing,” writes ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz. “But for even the best, that timing will scootch away, maybe for just a nanosecond. That’s all it takes to go from Ruth to scrub.”

It’s also quite difficult to become the first team to win 20 games in a row and follow it up with a four-game losing streak. “[Coach] Gregg Popovich tried to look at this through Russell Westbrook’s rose-colored glasses, and that was a mistake. For one, Westbrook’s frames don’t have any lenses. For another, it won’t change the sting,” Buck Harvey writes for the San Antonio Express-News. “This was the Spurs’ best and maybe last chance. They were healthy, with the home-court advantage, just two wins from the NBA Finals.” After the loss, the Spurs were nothing but deferential to the Thunder’s ability â€" a spot of magnanimity that suggests a veteran team seeing the changing way of things. The future of Tim Duncan notwithstanding, it’s hard to see the Spurs once again standing on the precipice of an NBA championship in the near future, if only because the competition has demonstrated itself to be that much better â€" and younger.

In the closing seconds of the game, Thunder star Kevin Durant embraced his family at courtside as the Oklahoman crowd continued its ear-splitting applause. It was a perfectly folksy moment, the young guy making good on his promise without forgetting where he came from. “These playoffs have become a coming-of-ages story for Durant and his Thunder. They swept the defending champion Dallas Mavericks, dismissed Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers in five games and ran off four consecutive victories against the Spurs after everyone questioned their resolve,” writes Yahoo’s Johnny Ludden. “The Spurs didn’t give back these West finals as much as Durant and the Thunder took them.” Now, the Thunder is in the envious position of waiting out the next few days as the Eastern Conference Finals resolve themselves. Whether their opponent is the Miami Heat or the Boston Celtics, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be the favorites.

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Counterintuitive as it may seem, the biggest storyline at this year’s European soccer championship, or Euro 2012, isn’t soccer, but race. The tournament’s Polish and Ukrainian settings have raised questions over whether those countries’ well-documented struggles with racism will be kept under wraps, or brought forth in a way that could get ugly for the numerous non-white players who will take the field. Of course, the whole can’t be judged by the behavior of a very vocal, very ignorant portion of the local fan base. But when the UEFA president declares that matches will be stopped should racial abuse become an issue, it’s clear that the problem isn’t an invented one. “The hope is that a million tourists, who have never visited Poland or Ukraine, will see enough to make them want to visit again,” Rob Hughes writes for the New York Times. “The fear is that even if new infrastructures are ready, old, intolerant attitudes toward race may not be.”

That said, there’s more than a few reasons to watch the games, which start Friday. Spain is the slight favorite to win it all, followed by Germany â€" two teams that met in the 2008 tournament final, with the Spaniards pulling off the narrow victory. Germany might be favored by some, but they don’t inspire the same poetry as Spain’s free-wheeling aesthetic. “They may just give us an encore of football that at times might have been set to the music of Mozart. It raced the pulse and lifted the soul and it sent football lovers of the most assorted blood waltzing off to the nearest cafés,” writes the Independent’s James Lawton. “Spain may not work the same effect on some of the doomsday characters who attach themselves to football in Poland and Ukraine, who strut so menacingly and throw up their stiff-armed salutes, but if anyone can banish the shadows it is surely the likes of Andres Iniesta and Xavi Herdandez.”

Other teams may stoke your interest, depending on the brand of imported beer you prefer or where you studied abroad. Ireland has clawed its way back to respectability after publicly collapsing at the 2002 World Cup. England remains fascinating, if not fundamentally flawed. Portugal is less than a contender, but one with a major asset: Cristiano Ronaldo, heralded as the best player in the tournament. (If nothing else, he surely has the confidence.) “Can one man take his team to the top by the strength of his genius alone? It’s been known to happen,” writes Time’s Bobby Ghosh. “In 1986, Diego Maradona led a mostly mediocre Argentinian squad to glory at the World Cup; four years later, he took an even weaker team all the way to the final.” We’ll see tomorrow, when the tournament kicks off at noon ET with Poland vs. Greece. (The Journal will live blog that game and have dispatches from Poland, Ukraine and all over Europe all month long.)

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Bingo may be less a sport, or even hobby, than it is a mind-numbing pastime. But the thrill of shouting “Bingo!” has helped pack cavernous rooms with seniors and other joy-riders looking for a lucky payout. At the Classical, Nick Murray heads to the Foxwoods casino to see how the bingo scene acquaints itself in 2012.

“Bingo may be the least respected game at the casinoâ€"too feminine and too old, associated not with Las Vegas glamour but the musty scent of a church on Thursday nightâ€"but in many ways, it’s also the purest. … There are no winning strategies, and unlike those at the nearby poker and blackjack tables, no one in the bingo hall maintains the illusion that they can somehow beat the house and reverse their fortunes,” he writes. “Even if you come all the way from New York or New Jersey, you don’t go to the bingo hall to win money; you go sit in a room with more people than you can count, to kill four or five hours, and listen to the caller-cum-hypnotist read his lullabye of letters and numbers, waiting for the one that will complete your card, but mostly just waiting.”

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