Player Grades: OKC Thunder Catch Heat, clinch playoffs

The Thunder struggled to find motivation until the Heat proved they were a rabbit worth chasing.

One of the more amusing things in all of sports is the fact that, in order to get greyhounds to participate in a  race, what you do is set up a “mechanical hare” for the dogs to chase. These things used to be full of real rabbit bones and guts, they even had little ears – no joke – because people assumed you had to try to fool the dogs into chasing it.

Eventually,  the hare stylists realized it didn’t really even matter what the mechanical hares looked or smelled like, most dogs would still chase them. The OKC Thunder are not most dogs. The OKC Thunder are this dog:

It took the right hare – a real hare – to get that dog to chase it as hard as it could. That’s how the Thunder are. They won’t chase unless the chase matters. Put a big, juicy, real rabbit like the Rockets or Warriors in front of them, oh boy… That rabbit is getting got. Those teams meet the Thunder’s perception of themselves.

Really, it’s not even surprising that they aren’t interested in a Memphis or Dallas rabbit. There’s no meat on those bones. The frustrating thing about this team, though, is that even these Heat or most of the Western Playoff teams fail to whet OKC’s appetite.

But it’s just a rabbit, though! Rabbits are cute! Rabbits are harmless!

No. rabbits are dangerous.

Wascally Wabbits

There’s the big creepy rabbit from Donnie Darko, which was actually a person, or maybe the ghost of a person, or maybe the future of a person. I’m not sure. That movie was bonkers. There’s Thumper from Bambi, who seems like a nice guy, but something was just off about him, right?

Listen to your dad, you furry fool. Then there’s that crazy guard rabbit from Monty Python, which might just be Thumper all grown up, and you can’t prove it’s not.

Oh, and let’s not forget Bugs Bunny, who just ruins people’s lives regularly.

The point is, rabbits are dangerous. And sometimes if you decide not to chase a rabbit, the rabbit decides to chase you. That’s how this game started, with the Heat hopping out to a 12-0 lead. The Heat’s mistake, though, may have been that they jumped out to too big of a lead. When the Thunder trailed 23-5 halfway through the first quarter, the Thunder got hungry.

The score from that point was 110-70, good guys, which included a 26-5 run in the fourth quarter, and the major difference was very clear: effort. The Thunder decided to care. Make no mistake, the Heat wanted this game. They could still fall to the eight seed in the East if they relax. That’s a bad spot. The Thunder, also, could fall to the eight seed, so it’s alarming that still, at this point, they need to be prodded to care.

The Thunder clinched a playoff spot with this win. Let’s hope they consider the first round of the Playoffs a juicy enough prey to chase.