Even though their season ended with four straight losses to the fearless Memphis Grizzlies, the Oklahoma City Thunder walked away from the 2012-13 NBA season with plenty of honors. Here is a quick run-down of where each important Thunder member ranked in the year-end awards balloting, and whether each result seems justified in the first days of a longer summer than anyone wanted.

Kevin Durant – 2nd place, Most Valuable Player: JUSTIFIED

After one of the best MVP runner-up seasons in memory, Durant admirably shouldered the burden in the wake of Russell Westbrook’s injury, becoming one of three players ever to top averages of 32 points, nine rebounds, and six assists in the playoffs. The bad news, as everyone knows by now, is that the last player to post such numbers was LeBron James in 2009, one year before he bolted Cleveland to take his talents to South Beach.

Durant obviously has no immediate plans to leave Oklahoma City, but after watching how angrily he played tonight – screaming for the ball when open, barking at referees to the point of letting Memphis get a fast-break layup at one point – his fans must wonder how close he is to the level of dissatisfaction that drove LeBron away from his first NBA home.

Serge Ibaka – 3rd place, Defensive Player of the Year: UNJUSTIFIED

He kept up his gaudy shot-blocking numbers (3.2 per game against Memphis), but still lacks the refinement and guile necessary to handle great inside scorers like Zach Randolph one-on-one.

Kevin Martin – 4th place, 6th Man of the Year: JUSTIFIED

He fit decently at times and better than that at others into the Thunder’s regular-season success, and his best two playoff games doubled as the last two Thunder victories of the season. He needs to play in an offensive system that takes greater advantage of his cagey offensive game, though the two-man chemistry he flashed with Nick Collison in a few playoff moments gives the Thunder second unit hope for the future.

Russell Westbrook – 9th place, Most Valuable Player: JUSTIFIED

Only a 4,000-word column or a tax-regulation-length compilation of advanced statistics could truly quantify what Westbrook meant to the Thunder this season, but here is one useful metric: Oklahoma City went 62-22 in games that Westbrook played, and 4-5 in games he missed. None of the eight players who finished above him in the balloting can make that depressing claim.

Scott Brooks – 14th place, Coach of the Year: JUSTIFIED

This blog has been just one voice among the many media outlets heaping scorn on Brooks, whether questioning his playing rotations or bemoaning his lack of an offensive system.

Those criticisms are valid, but Brooks also helped oversee the giant strides that Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka made this season, and he integrated Martin into his team’s attack seamlessly. Fourteenth seems about right for him. Perhaps one of the top ten coaches could have done more with this team, but he’s the Thunder’s man for now.

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So concludes another season of Kendrick Perkins’ least-favorite blog. Thanks to all the loyal readers, and to my supportive family – especially the newest member, Parker, whose steady three-month-old hands could have helped the Thunder take better care of the ball a time or three this year. See you all in 2014.

Scott Brooks is loyal to his players, and they seem to love him for it. His dedication flies in the face of trends, statistics, and know-it-all internet columnists. Sometimes the blogosphere’s smirking obscures analysis of the legitimate question: how much has Brooks’ faith in his usual starting lineup cost his team?

Thunder observers most often question Brooks’ insistence on giving Kendrick Perkins regular minutes, even though the veteran big man seems well past his prime. This blog has no qualms about joining the anti-Perkins (pro-Nick Collison) chorus; one must look no further than the last two regulation minutes of tonight’s agonizing Game 4 loss, in which Perkins failed to corral one of three potential defensive rebounds that would have all but sealed the game.

Even close games are not won or lost on two plays, though. To truly illustrate the cost of Brooks’ stubbornness, here is a subjective ranking of Perkins’ terrible plays from the first quarter, in ascending order of awfulness:

4th – Missed tip-in, 4:13. This led to the Thunder getting an offensive rebound and Perkins exiting the game, so win-win even though it was a troubling display of incompetence.

3rd – Layup blocked by Marc Gasol, 8:03. The reigning Defensive Player of the Year is allowed to swat a couple attempts without anyone questioning the swattee’s credibility.

2nd – Offensive foul, 11:26. This cost Oklahoma City its first possession, but Tayshaun Prince (the alleged victim) has baited many smarter players into doing dumber things.

1st – Missed 6-foot shot, 10:11. This looked like a terrible idea as it was happening, and got progressively worse with each agonizing step. Perkins received the ball in the mid-post, took an awkward spin over his left shoulder, and uncorked an attempt that moved horizontally, from left to right across the key, rather than toward the basket.

For the curious, Kevin Martin replaced Perkins at the 4:13 mark of the first quarter, with the Thunder leading 14-12. Over the next 12 minutes, Perkins sat the bench and watched the lead extend to 12.

He reentered with 3:38 left in the second quarter and avoided doing any damage to his team, but any doubt that the Thunder play better with him on the bench should have disappeared after his first eight minutes.

With Serge Ibaka (6-13, 17 points, 14 rebounds) reborn as a shooter after a dreadful start to the series, the Thunder can afford to throw out a smaller lineup and give up a few offensive rebounds as a trade-off to the greater offensive flow that a Perkins-free lineup affords them.

At the end, though, Brooks stuck with what he knew best, and the Perkins-Ibaka big man combo could not fend off the Grizzlies’ superior twin towers, as Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol scored the two back-breaking baskets of the overtime, from which Memphis emerged a 103-97 winner, one victory from the Conference Finals.

It’s impossible to say whether a smaller lineup would have yielded a better result, but with the Thunder one loss away from elimination, doesn’t Brooks have to try something new in Game 5?

The Oklahoma City Thunder could be up 3-0 in the Western Conference Semifinals, if only they knew how.

Instead, they face the prospect of falling behind 3-1, after blowing Saturday’s Game 3 in agonizing fashion.

Bad decisions abounded from the game’s first minutes. For the most costly example, we need only look late in the fourth quarter, when Reggie Jackson scored back-to-back baskets, pulling his team within six points.

Jackson then made the kind of decision he’ll have to eliminate if he wants to be a viable NBA point guard: he decided that nobody on his team needed to touch the ball on the subsequent possession. He hoisted a hopeless 15-foot half-floater that missed badly and killed the Thunder momentum.

Jackson wasn’t done, saving his two least-explicable fouls for the last two minutes. First was an over-aggressive charge with the score tied and 1:31 remaining, when it would have been far more prudent to back the ball out and look for a better shot. Then, with 50 seconds left and his team down by a basket, he needlessly hacked Mike Conley, who hit two free throws to stretch the lead to four.

This is an indictment of Jackson’s decision-making, but it’s also a vivid look at how ugly things get when the Thunder let anyone other than Kevin Durant make important basketball decisions. Scott Brooks has tried to buy Durant some rest, but he would be justified in playing his superstar as close to 48 minutes per game as possible, since the rest of his roster has regressed to a third-grade level of playmaking.

Serge Ibaka has suffered the most graphically and vividly, having blown a wonderful opportunity to assert himself as a true borderline-All-Star once Russell Westbrook was lost for the playoffs.

Here were his first five minutes tonight: make 1-2 free throws after being fouled on a fast break; miss a wide-open dunk; miss a wide-open jump shot; pass up a wide-open shot to shovel the ball backward to Durant, then get the ball back and miss a contested 20-footer that he forced over Zach Randolph. (In the second quarter, he decided he wasn’t done missing dunks, bricking another open one from the left side.) His effort level is still passable, but he looks mentally shaken by his lack of success in this series.

To his credit, he kept trying hard in the second half, making several huge plays near the basket on both ends. Still, it is hard to ignore his 0-7 mark on shots outside the paint, or the terror on his face as he attempted each. It was the face we’ve all made in pickup games when taking shots that we know are necessary to the offensive flow, but have no chance of success.

It must be obvious that Ibaka and Jackson both have to break through serious mental barriers in order to give Durant the support he needs – and they were the two best supporting players the Thunder had in Game 3. Unless someone else steps up, the West’s top seed will be going home early.

It may be time to stop wondering how the Oklahoma City Thunder – now tied at 1-1 in the Western Conference Semifinals after Tuesday’s 99-93 loss – can deal with Memphis’ vaunted inside tandem, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, because Mike Conley is presenting much more of a problem.

His Game 1 numbers were pedestrian – 5-15 field goals, 13 points, 5 assists – but he catalyzed the third quarter that almost put the game away, and he got the shots he wanted: 3-8 from four feet and in, 1-5 on three-pointers. It doesn’t take a math degree to see that hitting just one or two of those high-quality shots would have changed the game’s outcome.

In Game 2, they did. Conley’s three-pointer just under the two-minute mark gave Memphis the lead, and his 18-footer with 1:04 left pushed that lead to four. Those were the finishing touches on a magnificent performance: 26 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists, and only two turnovers in 42 minutes. His quickness and cleverness within the limited Grizzly offense are keeping the Thunder guessing on every pick-and-roll.

Randolph is presenting a different problem, even as the Thunder do a decent job of keeping him away from his favorite right-block location. Randolph has instead taken over real estate in the paint, where he has attempted 16 shots in the series. Tonight, he hit five of his seven tries from six feet and in. His free throw struggles (3-7 in Game 2) were a minor annoyance, but they didn’t stop him from attacking the rim.

Gasol, meanwhile, imitated Conley by hurting the Thunder from both inside and outside. He carried Memphis’ early offense, hitting his first three shots en route to an efficient 8-13 night from the floor, and converting all eight of his free throws.

Even with all of those holes springing in their defense, the Thunder did lead this game with under two minutes to play, and got virtuoso shooting games from Kevin Durant (a quiet 36 points on 11-21 shooting) and Derek Fisher (6-9, 4-5 threes for 19 points).

Fisher played well for the sixth straight time these playoffs, but pessimists will note that his three-point shooting – 19-30 thus far – is bound to return to earth. His effort on defense, where he came away with two huge steals in the back-and-forth final minutes, is welcome to stay for as long as it wants.

Durant, who finished one assist shy of a triple-double, was as magnificent as his fans have come to expect, but the enduring image from tonight may be his collapse to the floor while attempting to back down the frenetic Tony Allen with under a minute remaining.

The symbolism is clear – Durant, who has carried the Thunder to an even greater extent since the loss of Russell Westbrook, collapses under the weight of his burden – but the moment underscored another issue: Memphis’ ability to check Durant with exactly the kind of small, aggressive defender who’s given him problems throughout his career.

If the Thunder continue allowing Allen and his cohorts to be the aggressors, offensively and defensively, this series could be over even sooner than many expected.

In a Western Conference Semifinal series that started less than 48 hours after each participant closed out its first-round opponent, anxious moments were inevitable. The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 1 by handling those anxious moments with slightly cooler heads.

The semifinalists showed clear effects of their recent draining series, combining for probably the worst-played first quarter of the playoffs. Their ugly achievements included four missed layups in the first 1:30 (Tony Allen 2, Mike Conley, Jr. 1, Thabo Sefalosha 1), and 12 made field goals combined in the period (OKC 5-23, Memphis 7-23)

By the time that opening dust settled, the teams were almost ready to start the series. The Thunder got the most encouraging news when Kevin Durant rested for the first four minutes of the second period, leaving the offense in Kevin Martin’s hands.

OKC’s big offseason acquisition showed the ability to carry the second team when necessary, finding seams for difficult shots, drawing fouls, and spotting up smartly to allow Durant – coming off a first-round series in which he played 257 of a possible 288 minutes – a chance to catch his breath.

Martin’s emergence as his team’s secondary scorer answered one critical concern. The other came when the Grizzlies tested their hosts’ interior defense.

When these teams met in the same round two years ago, the Thunder post defenders really were more like “hosts,” as Zach Randolph memorably tortured Serge Ibaka. Randolph picked up where he left off in Game 1, hitting his first two shots over Ibaka and hurting backup Nick Collison by driving on him and displaying a surprisingly nimble touch on his finishes.

Randolph got plenty of help from Marc Gasol, Quincy Pondexter, and Mike Conley, who triggered a 27-17 third-quarter scoring margin that put Oklahoma City in a deep hole. The Thunder crawled back into the game in the fourth period, behind another Martin outburst, as he scored his team’s first six points to give Durant a rest from carrying the offensive burden.

This meant Durant was ready at the end, when he had just enough heroics left to overcome Memphis’ stout defense and his own exhaustion. The Thunder offense, inspired by Martin’s proactive cutting, had far more movement and imagination than when it stagnated against Houston, and Durant found enough openings to score eight points in the last four minutes, including the go-ahead basket with 11 seconds to go.

From there, the Thunder got a huge pass deflection from Thabo Sefalosha to force a Memphis turnover; two Reggie Jackson free throws that stretched the lead to three; and finally a senseless foul by Jackson that gave Pondexter three free throws that could have tied the game.

Pondexter missed two of the three, though, and the game mercifully ended, much as it had begun: with questionable decision-making on both sides, but enough heart and effort on both sides to deliver a truly entertaining result.

After four nerve-wracking contests (two wins, two losses) that almost broke their collective will, the Oklahoma City Thunder put together a solid enough effort to finally dispose of the eighth-seeded Houston Rockets. The West’s top seed pulled away thanks to two related factors.

Defense Decides: In the first quarter, the Thunder gave up at least seven points with indecisive or too-slow rotations. Kendrick Perkins symbolized the subpar effort with his half-hearted switch/retreat that gave Harden a clean three-point look off a high pick-and-roll.

In the second quarter, Oklahoma City came out clearly determined to moving their feet and staying active on defense. The openings slid shut for the Rockets, who still went 8-17 from the field in the quarter, but needed several off-balance makes to get there. The Thunder defense was even more important than Kevin Martin’s revelatory scoring outburst (3-6 field goals, 12 points in the quarter) in giving the visitors a four-point lead at halftime.

Then the Thunder opened the second half by falling right back into poor defensive habits and digging themselves a 10-point hole. Chandler Parsons’ shooting (3-4 threes in the quarter) was a slight aberration, but allowing Harden to repeatedly beat his man off the dribble was inexcusable.

By quarter’s end, the Thunder righted the ship and kept the defensive pressure up until they seized control midway through the fourth. Making a commitment to activity on defense exposed the Rockets’ lack of firepower. Forced to make difficult shots, every Houston player outside of Harden and (briefly) Parsons wilted.

The perception that Oklahoma City’s offense was in trouble did not really jibe with reality. Once they tightened up their defense, points flowed far more freely. During the 7-0 run that jump-started the fourth quarter and extended the Thunder lead from one to seven, the visitors forced two turnovers and allowed no better looks than contested three-point tries by Houston’s secondary players.

Collison Course: The Thunder tellingly found their rhythm on both ends when coach Scott Brooks made the series’ crucial lineup decision: burying the ineffective Kendrick Perkins and his alleged defensive expertise on the bench, and finally unleashing Nick Collison.

Brooks’ best low-post defender (yes, better than Perkins or Serge Ibaka) made the most of his 22 minutes, by far the most he’d played in the first round. He was relentless energy in motion, zooming around the court to protect his territory and even displaying some near-telepathic two-man play with Kevin Martin.

It may be a coincidence that Martin’s best game of the playoffs (25 points, 7-13 FG, 8-8 FT) came when Collison got his big chance, but Brooks would be wise to stick with both of them against their next opponent: a Memphis team that specializes in forcing secondary players to step up.

Collison also represents his team’s best chance at containing Zach Randolph, who dominated Perkins and Ibaka when the teams met in the 2011 postseason. If Collison can make Randolph work for his points, the rest of the Thunder should be able to replicate some of tonight’s peak defensive intensity.

The Oklahoma City Thunder must head back to Houston for Friday’s Game 6 of the Western Conference first round, with a 3-2 lead in the series but a two-game losing streak on the week.

Dropping Game 5 at home by a score 0f 107-100, while creating sports-radio fodder with a disastrous “Hack-a-Asik” sequence in the fourth quarter, may have sent OKC fans into panic mode. What may make them feel even worse is how easy it is to diagnose their problem – and how little anyone can do about it.

Kevin Durant has been the best player in Seattle/Oklahoma City since he arrived in 2007, but the margin of superiority has never been this pronounced.

For the playoffs, Durant thus far leads the Thunder in points, assists, turnovers, and shot attempts of all types, and he’s a hair behind Serge Ibaka for the lead in rebounds. Since Russell Westbrook’s season-ending knee injury in Game 2 of the playoffs, Durant’s usage rate has jumped from 28.1% to 34.8%, per nba.com’s Stats tool.

The workload is obviously taking its toll on the three-time scoring champion: In Games 1 and 2, he committed three total turnovers. Without Westbrook, that number has jumped to 14 over the past three games.

Westbrook watched most of Game 5 from high in a luxury suite with a grim expression. Here were the candidates he saw attempting to fill his second-banana shoes:

Ibaka – “The Favorite”

He has the physical skills and the contract extension that amounted to Thunder management choosing him over James Harden. His improvement this season mostly justified the big money, as he led the league in blocked shots again, shored up some of the defensive work that doesn’t make highlight film, and improved his shooting.

His playoff performance has thus far been solid but unspectacular, with numbers roughly commensurate with his regular-season output, and few memorable moments. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to stand out if Houston continues to use Harden against him on defense, but Serge may not have the polish necessary to take advantage of a smaller player.

Kevin Martin – “The Import”

After a productive and efficient season, Martin has underwhelmed against Houston, shooting under 35% from the field and looking somewhat lost against Houston’s small lineups. He’s also suffered from his team’s inability to take late leads, which negates his skill at drawing fouls and converting free throws.

Thabo Sefalosha – “The Darkhorse”

His shooting came a long way this season, but it’s regressed in the playoffs, where he’s seen his three-point accuracy drop from 41.9% to 30% against the Rockets. He’s also had an awfully hard time staying in front of James Harden, considering that he practiced with Houston’s new star every day for three years and should have a good handle on that tricky hesitation-crossover.

Nick Collison – “The Forgotten Man”

This blog has long wondered why Collison doesn’t feature more prominently in OKC’s scheme, and his passing and mobility seem to make him a good match against the small-ball Rockets. His 15 minutes per game have not been enough to give him a chance to shine.

It has been nearly a week since surgery ended Russell Westbrook’s season, and reality is sinking in for his team, which suffered a painful 105-103 loss to Houston in Monday’s Game 4.

After suffering the loss of their star guard and their chance at a first-round sweep, Westbrook’s teammates have hopefully moved through the first four stages of grief. Now, in acceptance, they can acknowledge some of the areas that might actually improve in Russell’s absence. Without further ado, the Thunder’s silver linings:

1. Shooting – While neither Reggie Jackson nor Derek Fisher represents anything near Westbrook’s terrifying off-the-dribble force, they are at least comparable as spot-up shooters. Since Westbrook insists on taking several ill-advised three-point tries per game (3.7 in the regular season, 4.5 in the playoffs), it’s reasonable to expect the Thunder offense to run differently now that those shots are being redistributed to better shooters.

For the record, Fisher is 8-13 from long range in the playoffs, while Jackson is 7-17. Westbrook, pre-injury, was 2-9. Nobody is reasonably arguing that the Thunder are better without him, but they might be able to do some specific things more effectively. Smart floor spacing could take advantage of the greater threat that Jackson and Fisher represent around the arc.

2. Defense – Westbrook’s tendency to ball-watch and gamble on this end leads to avoidable breakdowns. Jackson’s greater discipline shows signs of patching some of the holes that Westbrook’s poor habits sometimes leave. (Fisher is all but useless defensively at this point, though he does try.)

In Game 3, Patrick Beverley, Jeremy Lin, and Aaron Brooks – Houston’s primary ballhandlers outside of James Harden – combined to shoot 6-22, with six assists. In Game 4, Lin sat with his chest injury, but Beverley (5-10, 16 points) and Brooks (3-7, 7 points) were far more effective. Westbrook might have given up similar numbers – and he has, many times, against guards of lesser repute – so this potential silver lining remains unproven.

* * *

This ends the list of possible benefits the Thunder could derive from Westbrook’s injury. The last two games have proven that they are in serious trouble.

OKC has outscored the Rockets by 33 points over the course of the series, but most of those came in the Game 1 blowout. The last three games have come down to the final seconds, when Scott Brooks has continued to display uncreative play-calling and curious lineup choices.

The Thunder only managed to split the games in Houston due to a superhuman effort from Kevin Durant, who has played 88 of a possible 96 minutes since Westbrook went down. He has scored 79 points in those minutes, but needed some of the most difficult shots of the first round to do so. At least half of his 12 made field goals in Game 4 came with two or more defenders draped all over him.

His team is still likely to triumph, probably closing out the series on Wednesday in Chesapeake Energy Arena, but Durant will need more help to carry his team past Memphis or the Clippers in the next round. Oklahoma City’s sky is awfully cloudy.

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s 104-101 victory over the host Houston Rockets put the West’s top seed one victory away from advancing to the conference semifinals. The win came harder than it should have, though, and it highlighted some harsh realities for the Thunder as they move toward a second-round matchup with either the Clippers or Grizzlies.

OKC is undefeated without Russell Westbrook. This is not to say that their indestructible point guard was holding them back, only that they hung on in their first test of what will be a Westbrook-less postseason.

Basketball fans and writers have had two full days to dissect Westbrook’s fluky knee injury and what it will and won’t mean for his team. Now that we’ve had an actual game sample, we can separate those predictions into myths and truths.

Truth: “Kevin Durant will have to step it up now.”

The league’s second-leading scorer almost outscored his opponent singlehandedly in the first quarter (17 points for Durant, 19 for Houston), en route to a playoff-career-high-tying 41 points.

Obviously, the Thunder needed every one of those points, but they came at a cost. Durant handled the ball much more than usual and had to create many difficult shots off the dribble. He is such a proficient shot-maker that even some of his far-fetched tries found the net, but he also missed seven in the paint, several of those coming at the end of coast-to-coast drives when he took on almost the entire Houston defense.

The Rockets don’t have the personnel to contain Durant, whose offensive attack has matured so much this season, but upcoming opponents will offer a stiffer test.

Myth: “Westbrook has been holding KD back.”

The Thunder’s point guard took huge developmental strides as a playmaker over the past few months, finding much smarter ways to use his teammates and setting a career-high mark in assists. He still makes 3-4 head-scratching decisions per game, but his relentless attacking mentality puts so much pressure on the defense that it creates openings for his teammates.

Neither Reggie Jackson nor Derek Fisher, who represent the Thunder’s point guard platoon going forward, have anything approaching Westbrook’s scoring or passing ability. He has made Durant more dangerous by ensuring that defenses spend more time in scrambling confusion.

Truth: “The Thunder still have the pieces to make a deep run.”

Serge Ibaka and Thabo Sefalosha both developed into true offensive threats this season, though mostly as catch-and-shoot opportunists. Kevin Martin remains one of the league’s most efficient scorers, and has begun to develop some of the same pick-and-roll chemistry with Nick Collison that James Harden once enjoyed with OKC’s backup big man. Even Kendrick Perkins and Reggie Jackson, frequent whipping boys on this blog, have shown recent signs of competence.

Myth: “Scott Brooks has figured it out.”

Perhaps nobody is saying this, which is fair because even Brooks’ limited options should have allowed him to find Durant some rest and a few easier looks, which in turn would help the Thunder hold onto a mid-teens/low-twenties lead through four quarters.

Since more than half of the NBA’s 30 teams make the playoffs, a few below-average squads inevitably sneak in. On Wednesday night, one of those mediocre teams dragged a superior opponent down to its level.

The Houston Rockets are mediocre not in terms of talent, but in their offense’s utter lack of sophistication. Their game plan has all the cleverness of a pickup run at the local gym. In Game 2 of their first round series against Oklahoma City, they convinced the host Thunder to run an equally primitive scheme.

The result was a sloppy 105-102 Thunder victory that put the Western Conference’s top seed up 2-0 in the series. Careful Oklahoma City observers saw some encouraging signs, but found plenty of concern in the too-close victory.

Encouraging . . . Thunder role players hit the game’s two most critical shots: Thabo Sefalosha’s three-pointer with just over a minute left gave his team a four-point lead, and Serge Ibaka’s 18-foot jumper with 31.2 seconds remaining pushed the lead to five.

Concern . . . Those two shots came about because after five years of playing together, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook still don’t have an offensive set that can reliably produce a quality look when needed most.

By the end of Game 2, the two All-Stars were barely even bothering to run the simplest pick-and-rolls, preferring to take turns holding the ball, staring down a defense that had plenty of time to set itself, and then trying to beat a defender off the dribble.

Encouraging . . . The Thunder once again proved capable of big scoring runs, like the 12-0 spurt that closed out the third quarter.

Concern . . . The hosts allowed a 16-0 run in the latter half of the fourth quarter that actually left them staring down a 95-91 deficit with less than three minutes to go. A simplistic offensive team like the Rockets shouldn’t be able to run off that many unanswered points against a strong defensive team.

Encouraging . . . The Thunder allowed Houston to shoot a mere 28.6% (10-35) on three-pointers.

Concern . . . Over half of those 35 attempts were open looks that Chandler Parsons and Carlos Delfino (each 3-10 from beyond the arc) simply misfired. Compounding the problem, the Thunder hoisted 35 of their own three-point attempts, hitting only 11 (31.4%). Kevin Durant connected on two of his nine tries from deep, while Russell Westbrook went 1-7.

It’s dangerous to condemn the result without looking at the process; in this case, though, many of the Thunder’s long-distance heaves caused knowledgeable fans to cringe even as the shooter lined up his look.

Encouraging . . . Reggie Jackson continued his late-season run of strong play, holding the fort with accurate shooting, tough rebounds, and passable playmaking during his 19 minutes.

Concern . . . Jackson played more than his usual run because Westbrook picked up three foolish fouls in the first half, and could have been called for at least two more. This game became a playground battle quickly, and Russell was all too happy to ride the unstructured wave.

Game 3 awaits on Saturday night in Houston, where the Thunder should hope for more success in resisting the level of its opponent.