Chris Paul will not shut up about the playoffs when he talks to his teammates.
“I’m being serious,” the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard said while laughing, “they probably get tired of me talking about it.”
The Thunder may have surprised the league and bettors with their playoff chase, but they cannot feel like they don’t belong. The more Paul talks about it, the more he reminds teammates they cannot be starstruck.
“One of the things you learn about the playoffs … is you want to make sure you have a team that feels like it can’t be beat four out of seven times,” he said on a Zoom call with media Wednesday.
As head coach Billy Donovan put it, if you think you’re going to lose, you probably will.
“For any team to really be good, you have to have belief and you have to have hope,” he said. “If you’re in this situation with a mentality of a lack of belief or hope, you’re probably going to go home pretty quickly.”
It’s actually quite cyclic. Confidence typically comes from playing well; playing well often starts by having confidence.
“Generally if you don’t play well, your confidence level’s not going to be too high. So there’s an enormous amount of effort that goes into playing well in terms of controlling the things that you can control,” Donovan said.
“I think if you can do those things at a high level, those things generally promote some level of confidence, or hope or excitement, about what could potentially happen.”
The Thunder did those little things in their 19-point take down of the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday.
The game before, they led the Denver Nuggets late but but were pushed to overtime and eventually fell.
Nevertheless, after beating two playoff teams and taking a third to overtime, there is positivity in the locker room.
That confidence wasn’t built against the Lakers or Nuggets or Utah Jazz. It wasn’t built by going 3-0 in scrimmage games.
In winning consistently during the regular season, Oklahoma City built up the mindset that they can compete with any team, and they continue to show that in the bubble.
“The best teams know that you can’t be beat on a Tuesday night in January, or on a Thursday night in July. They know that they can’t be beat four out of seven times,” Paul said. “So we’re just trying to build that identity.”