Real winners don’t accept moral victories, and Chris Paul wasn’t about to let the Thunder pretend to be anything but. So despite the Thunder doing a much better job of competing with the Rockets in Game 2, at the end of the day, Oklahoma City was on the wrong side of a 111-98 loss.
Paul ended the night with 14 points, six rebounds and two assists. He struggled to find his rhythm and ultimately accepted the blame for his team falling short.
“I gotta do more… I gotta be better,” Paul said to reporters after the contest.
“I think that’s the tough part, to know how hard we fought — guys worked hard, you know what I mean? We put ourselves in position to win that game and I gotta be better for us.”
Entering the fourth quarter, despite some struggles from a few of Billy Donovan’s rotation players, the Thunder managed to carry a 78-77 lead into the game’s final frame. They fell apart as Houston used a 17-0 run to take control of the game in the first half of the fourth quarter, though.
The Thunder didn’t really threaten the Rockets after that.
When asked specifically what the Thunder did better in Game 2, Paul didn’t want to give any indication that he was satisfied with the fact that his team merely brought a lead into the fourth quarter.
“We communicated a lot better coming into this game, sorta knew what our plan was, knew what we wanted to do, but there’s no moral victories,” he said.
“I don’t know, like I said, my guys worked as hard as they could, fought really hard and we put ourselves in position and I let this one get away from us and we just gotta get ready for Game 3.”
The most unfortunate thing for Oklahoma City is that the team failed to capitalize on the absence of Russell Westbrook. Westbrook, who is probably looking forward to the opportunity to square off against his former team, has been missing for the Rockets as he’s been recovering from a strained quad. There was some hope from within the Rockets organization that he could return for Game 3.
That, obviously, isn’t good news for the Thunder.
Under normal circumstances, Chris Paul and co. would be looking forward to heading back home for Game 3 and Game 4 and hoping to knot the series at two.
Instead, they’ll lick their wounds, continue to sleep in Orlando and do it all over again on Saturday and Monday, respectively.
For sure, though, Paul will be hoping that his team comes away with a different result.