Thanks to Kevin Durant’s 41 points and Serge Ibaka’s defense down the stretch, the Thunder won Game 5 and closed out the series against the Nuggets, 100-97.

There’s no doubt about it — OKC won in spite of Russell Westbrook’s play. He went 3-of-15 from the field and turned the ball over three times while posting just four assists on a night that Durant hit 14 field goals. He nearly turned the ball over twice in the waning minutes, once dribbling the ball off of his foot after crossing half court and then again nearly whipping the ball out of bounds while attempting to pass the ball to James Harden. Ty Lawson beat him to the hole repeatedly because he kept getting stuck on ball screens set by Nene. He should thank his lucky stars that his teammates were there to protect the rim. (How about Serge Ibaka’s line? One point, eight rebounds, two assists, two steals, NINE BLOCKS and five turnovers. Wowsers.)

Westbrook made a three-pointer with 8:11 to play to cut the Nuggets’ lead to four, but was pretty dreadful down the stretch. Here’s a look at his play-by-play:

6:56 Russell Westbrook misses jumper
6:13 Russell Westbrook misses 25-foot three point jumper
4:20 Russell Westbrook misses 5-foot two point shot (this was a force)
3:53 Russell Westbrook offensive rebound
3:50 Wilson Chandler blocks Russell Westbrook’s 4-foot jumper
3:03 Russell Westbrook makes free throw 1 of 2
3:03 Russell Westbrook misses free throw 2 of 2
1:15 Russell Westbrook shooting foul (Ty Lawson draws the foul)

So in the last seven minutes, he went 0-4 from the field, 1-2 from the free throw line, with one rebound, one assist and one foul. Plus, he nearly turned the ball over twice because he was sloppy with the ball. He also contributed to the defense that allowed Ty Lawson and Ray Felton to combine for 26 points on 8-of-17 shooting.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the thing that really worries me about the Thunder is the lack of heady play at the point. There’s no doubt that Russell Westbrook is a great player, but he’s not yet a great point guard.

I’ll give him some credit for Game 5 though. Coming down the stretch, he recognized that it was not his night, gave the ball to Durant and got out of his way.

Watching the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the Thunder/Nuggets series, I noticed that OKC didn’t utilize Kevin Durant much down the stretch, even though he had 37 points in the game with seven minutes to play. Over those final seven minutes, Durant was just 1-2 from the field.

Here’s how the Thunder’s final possessions went, before the Nuggets had to start fouling with 0:11 to play:

7:26 Kevin Durant makes two point shot (Russell Westbrook assists)
7:05 Kevin Durant makes 14-foot two point shot (Russell Westbrook assists)
6:13 Russell Westbrook makes 19-foot two point shot
5:45 Russell Westbrook lost ball (Raymond Felton steals)
5:28 Kevin Durant misses 25-foot three point jumper
5:05 Russell Westbrook misses 17-foot two point shot
4:26 Russell Westbrook misses 24-foot three point jumper
4:01 Thabo Sefolosha misses 23-foot three point jumper
3:26 Kevin Durant makes 11-foot jumper (Thabo Sefolosha assists)
2:38 Serge Ibaka misses 16-foot jumper
2:09 Russell Westbrook misses 17-foot jumper
1:40 Russell Westbrook bad pass (Nene Hilario steals)
1:06 Russell Westbrook misses 11-foot jumper
1:05 Kendrick Perkins makes tip shot
0:22 Russell Westbrook makes 15-foot two point shot

Not counting those first two possessions, someone other than Durant shot the ball (or turned it over) on eight of the next 10 possessions. During that span, Russell Westbrook shot 2-for-6 for four points, zero assists and two turnovers. (He did assist on the first two Durant makes.)

If not for the blown goaltending no-call on Kendrick Perkins’ tip-in, the Thunder would have found themselves down by one without the ball with a minute to play. Under those circumstances they easily could have lost the game and they would have those previous eight possessions to blame.

I like Russell Westbrook and he’s obviously a great player, but he doesn’t have a point guard mentality. This has been only major gripe with his game since he has come into the league and that probably won’t change anytime soon. He went 2-for-6 with two turnovers, so he was responsible for five empty possessions in the final seven minutes. It would have been six if not for Perkins’ illegal tip-in.

At some point, Westbrook needs to figure out a way to get Durant (arguably the league’s best scorer) the ball in a position where he can be successful, especially in crunch time when Durant is obviously the team’s best chance at winning. If teams are going to double-team Durant, fine. Let Durant use his size to find the open man. I didn’t see a lot of that down the stretch. Instead, I saw Westbrook dribbling around and firing up contested jumpers. The shoot-first point guard can be successful depending on team make-up (i.e. Derrick Rose, who is clearly the Bulls’ best offensive weapon), but OKC cannot afford to waste crucial possessions in a tight game.

For this reason, I don’t know that the Thunder are championship caliber, at least not yet. They’re my favorite team in the West, but without heady point guard play, it’s tough to win those nailbiters down the stretch.

My post from a few days ago was relatively well-received at reddit, and one of the readers there said that he’d like to see the same graph for some of the all-time great point guards.

So with a little help from Basketball-Reference.com, I compiled a list of (all?) the Hall of Fame point guards: Oscar Robertson, Lenny Wilkens, Bob Cousy, Jerry West, John Stockton, Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, Dennis Johnson, Tiny Archibald, Calvin Murphy, Pete Maravich and Walt Frazier. Unfortunately, the NBA didn’t start keeping track of turnovers until the 1977-78 season, so there’s no assist-to-turnover data for the first four (Robertson, Wilkens, Cousy, West) and the data for Archibald, Murphy, Maravich and Frazier is incomplete, so I could only use their post-1977 numbers.

I also compiled a list of the top non-HOF point guards who are both retired and still active: Jason Kidd, Mark Jackson, Steve Nash, Gary Payton, Rod Strickland, Maurice Cheeks, Terry Porter, Tim Hardaway, Andre Miller, Muggsy Bogues, Kevin Johnson, Derek Harper, Stephon Marbury (yes, Stephon Marbury), John Lucas, Norm Nixon, Mookie Blaylock, Sam Cassell, Avery Johnson, Baron Davis, Nick Van Exel, Allen Iverson, Chauncey Billups and Mike Bibby. All of these players have at least 5,400 career assists, which seemed to be the cutoff for players I was interested in using for this study.

Lastly, I added seven of the top current point guards who have yet to break the 5,400-assist barrier: Tony Parker, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Rajon Rondo, Derrick Rose, Deron Williams and of course, Chris Paul.

I first tackled this subject two years ago, and settled on the shot-to-assist ratio to determine whether a player is “pass-first” or “shoot-first.” The higher the number, the more of a “shoot-first” player he is. To determine whether or not a player is “turnover-prone,” I calculated each player’s assist-to-turnover ratio. The higher the number, the better the player is at taking care of the ball, relative to what he’s asked to do as a playmaker for his team. The graph takes a gentle downward slope because assists are part of both calculations. (Note: While I do like FGA/A as the criteria for shoot-first/pass-first, I am not completely sold on A/TO as the criteria for turnover-prone. Perhaps (A+FGA)/TO would show shoot-first guards in a better light? Maybe I’ll try that next year.)

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The Thunder’s 90-87 loss to the Lakers on Sunday is a great example of why Russell Westbrook holds the championship keys for this young Oklahoma City team. He posted 22 points, six assists and six rebounds, but turned the ball over seven times, including two bad turnovers in the final minute when the Thunder were trying to complete a comeback.

He’s super-aggressive and supremely talented, but the bottom line is that he’s a scoring guard playing the point, and he has to learn to keep himself under control, especially when he’s attacking the rim and there are defenders in position to take the charge. Unfortunately, his turnovers are actually up this year (3.8 vs 3.3 last season) so it doesn’t look like the light is going to go on anytime soon. He’s actually tied with Rajon Rondo with the most turnovers per game this season.

Can the Thunder emerge from the West? I think they can, but they’re going to have to play better offensively than they did on Sunday. OKC took the Lakers to a Game 7 last year, and once they get Kendrick Perkins into the mix — he sat out of Sunday’s game with sprained knee — they’ll fare better against the Lakers’ big front line. Serge Ibaka looks more than capable of playing power forward, while James Harden and Nick Collison anchor a very capable bench.

Believe it or not — even with the best scorer in the league in Kevin Durant, the Thunder have trouble executing offensively. Westbrook is not a natural playmaker so when he’s penetrating he’s looking for his own shot. The Thunder will probably have to play Harden at the two down the stretch if Ibaka and Perkins are also on the floor. Otherwise, the defense will be able to focus on Durant and Westbrook.

If Westbrook can raise his game and increase his assist-to-turnover ratio from the current 2.2 to 2.8 or 3.0, the Thunder will be very, very dangerous come playoff time.

There are a few things to take from this game:

– Derek Fisher is having a tough time guarding Russell Westbrook. Don’t be surprised if we see more Shannon Brown in the next few games (but it was Jordan Farmar who was in the game at the end). Phil Jackson trusts Fisher, but he just can’t keep athletic guards in front of him anymore. Westbrook had 27 points last night.

– The win gives the Thunder confidence. They know now that they can beat the Lakers in a playoff situation. Even if they don’t come back to win the series, this victory is big for this young team.

– Through three games, Ron Artest is averaging 8-3-2 and is shooting 32% from the field (16% from 3PT). Trevor Ariza averaged 11-4-2 and 50% shooting (48% from 3PT) in last year’s playoff run. If Artest were shutting Durant down it would be one thing, but KD posted 29-19-4 last night. He only shot 33% from the field, but he went 12 of 13 from the free throw line.

– After 17 blocks in Game 2, OKC had just three blocks in Game 3. I’m not sure what this means, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

When handicapping the NBA MIP award, I always like to look at the player’s original draft position. Here’s a table with the last 20 winners of the MIP award. Take a look:

Notice anything? Only one MIP winner in the last 16 years (Tracy McGrady) was drafted in the first 12 picks.

It appears that the voters don’t just look at overall improvement, they also take into account unexpected improvement.

Looking at TrueHoop’s list of MIP candidates that received more than one vote from a panel of voters, here are draft positions for each player: Kevin Durant (2), Andrew Bogut (1), Corey Brewer (7), Joakim Noah (9), Josh Smith (17), Russell Westbrook (4), Aaron Brooks (26), Anderson Varejao (30), Channing Frye (8), Al Horford (3), Andray Blatche (49) and Zach Randolph (19).

Can we safely cross Durant, Bogut, Noah, Westbrook, Frye and Horford off the list?

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Garnett’s knee is just fine. It has been a concern in camp, but apparently KG has his explosion back. In a recent practice, he caught an alley-oop and slammed it home. The Celtics’ fortunes depend heavily on the health of Garnett’s knee. Without him at full strength, they’ll have a tough time competing with the Cavs and Magic. As an NBA fan, a healthy KG is good for the league.

Is Russell Westbrook turning into a dependable point guard? The Oklahoman reports that is A/T ratio in the preseason is 5.4. Last season it was 1.6, which is quite bad. It’s a small sample size, but if Westbrook can get his A/T ratio above 3.0, it will reap dividends for the Thunder. From a fantasy perspective, if he were to cut his turnovers in half and have the same number of assists (which would result in a A/T ratio of about 3.0), then he’d be the 15th most efficient point guard (just below Mo Williams) instead of the 21st most efficient.

Stephen Jackson will play for the Warriors, but he’s not happy about it. There’s a good chance the Warriors will acquiesce and try to fulfill Jackson’s wishes to be traded, but the 31 year-old has three more years remaining on his contract at the tune of $9.3 per season, so there’s no guarantee that a playoff team would be willing to make a move for him. Miami could move Michael Beasley, but Jackson’s contract would ruin the Heat’s financial flexibility next summer. The Suns could use Jackson to replace an aging Grant Hill, but they’re in financial trouble. The Hornets probably make the most sense, but are they willing to spend?

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The draft kicks off (or is it “tips off”?) in less than three hours, so I thought it would be fun to publish one last edition of the consensus mock draft. I pulled in mocks from SI.com and ProBasketballNews since they are current and are well respected enough for NBA.com to use in their consensus.

If three or more mocks made a pick, then it’s considered majority rules and that pick is listed in bold with the number of votes next to it in parenthesis. For those picks that have two or fewer mocks agreeing on a pick, I make the pick for them. For example, the five mocks have five different players going to the Knicks, so I made my best guess — Jrue Holiday. I went with Jennings over Flynn for the Bucks at #10 because Chad Ford reported that the Bucks are in love with Jennings’ upside. Et cetera.

A few random thoughts…

- Even though the #5 and #6 picks aren’t true consensus picks, three mocks had the T-Wolves using one of those back-to-back picks on Stephen Curry, while three mocks had the T-Wolves using the other pick on James Harden — who cares who is picked first? (Besides the players, of course. Their salary depends on it!)

- I’d be a little surprised if the Thunder drafted Rubio and kept him. Although I don’t think it would be a bad move, as Russell Westbrook is too much of a shoot-first point guard in my opinion, Westbrook’s camp has been pretty adamant that he doesn’t want to move off the ball. If OKC sees Westbrook as a point guard, then the best fit appears to be James Harden.

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Chad Ford writes about why Ricky Rubio is being so selective in his workouts.

First of all, the idea that Rubio is the only one doing it is silly. James Harden has only worked out for four teams. Even the Knicks couldn’t get him in. Hasheem Thabeet will likely only work out for three. DeMar DeRozan has been really selective, and so has Stephen Curry.

It’s pretty simple as to why Rubio is being selective: He is going to have to pay a lot of money for the privilege to play in the NBA next season. His buyout will cost him something between $5 and $7 million of his own money. That’s a lot of money, especially when you consider that Rubio wasn’t making a ton of dough in Spain. He essentially will be signing over his paychecks for the next couple of years to his team in Spain.

The Kings have an obvious hole at point guard on a young team. It seems to be the place his camp wants him to land. If the Kings draft him, I don’t think there’s any question that Rubio would pay the buyout and come. The question is, will the Kings draft him? I think the odds are in Rubio’s favor, but it sounds like some in the organization still need to be convinced.

Rubio’s future might depend on something he has no control over — is Russell Westbrook a point guard? A statistical study I did a few weeks ago revealed that he was turnover-prone and shoot-first, though obviously as a young rookie, there is room for improvement. If the Thunder think he’s a point guard, then I doubt they take Rubio. They’ll take James Harden, who averaged 4.2 assists during his senior year even though he was taking 13 shots per game.

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