The first three games of the 2012 NBA Finals are in the books, and the Oklahoma City Thunder trail the Miami Heat two games to one.
The Thunder have broken my heart the last two games, and the breakup’s epicenter has been at the free-throw line.
OKC led the NBA in free-throw percentage the last two years. This year, the Thunder kept a comfortable lead in the league, making 80.6 percent of their free throws.
That number improved in the first three rounds of this year’s playoffs to 83.5 percent. In a game where making 60 percent of the shots you take is pretty spectacular, an 83.5 percentage is ridiculous.
No matter what else the team did — poorly or spectacularly — the Thunder would always make their free throws.
And then the Finals started, and it all went to hell.
In the Thunder’s losses in Games 2 and 3, they shot a paltry 34-for-50 from the charity stripe. So, in the two most important games thus far in the franchise’s history — I refuse to acknowledge the Seattle SuperSonics’ history as the Thunder’s — they are shooting 68 percent.
Both games were decided by fewer points than the Thunder missed at the stripe. Bottom line: That’s not a statistic that wins championships.
The Thunder’s struggles at the line hark back to the 2008 NCAA men’s basketball tournament — an event that is close to my heart for all the wrong reasons.
I had filled out a March Madess bracket for the first time, and I hitched my horse to the Memphis Tigers. The Tigers had dominated all year, point guard Derrick Rose was the guaranteed No. 1 pick and coach John Calipari’s year had finally come — or so I thought.
Memphis (OKC) easily made it to the semifinals, beating perennial power UCLA (San Antonio Spurs) by 15.
The Tigers (Thunder) entered the final favored over the Kansas Jayhawks (Miami Heat). They had the best scorer in the country, Chris Douglas-Roberts (Kevin Durant), and an insanely quick point guard, Rose (Russel Westbrook).
Alright, this is just getting freaky.
Memphis had the game in hand — until they missed four free throws in the final two minutes, allowing an OT and losing the national championship. In the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Game 3, while trailing by one, Durant missed two free throws to give the Thunder the lead, a missed opportunity OKC never recovered from.
Just to really hammer this metaphor home, a young point guard by the name of Mario Chalmers — none other than the current starting point for the Heat — hit a game-tying 3-pointer for the Jayhawks with nine seconds left in regulation to force the overtime.
If the Thunder don’t start making free throws, they’re going to make this a truly poignant juxtaposition, miss the big opportunity and lose the Finals.
The Thunder have plenty to worry about in these games without messing up the thing they do best. They’re free, Oklahoma City, so don’t break my heart again — stop leaving them at the line.