​Spurs/Thunder Might Be The Best Series We Get All Playoffs Long

This article is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NBA Playoffs coverage.

All season, the NBA community has been looking forward to—yearning for, even—an epic Western Conference Finals showdown between the defending champion Golden State Warriors and the winner of a probable second round series between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder. It was hard not to beg for seven games every time the Dubs played OKC or San Antonio during the regular season, and much of basketball Twitter did just that.

But while the promised Spurs-Thunder series has become a reality, the rest of the postseason that fans spent all winter envisioning is up in the air. With one injury to Steph Curry, the reigning and probably soon-to-be two-time defending MVP, the Spurs/Thunder series has gone from the undercard to something like the main event. We don't know what kind of shape the Warriors will be in when they get to the conference finals, or if they'll even get there at all.Curry's knee injury has upended everything we thought we knew about the Western Conference playoffs; we do, at least, still have this.

Starting on Saturday, the Spurs and the Thunder are going to square off in what should be one of the best series of the postseason. Let's take a closer look:

Since the Thunder started making regular playoff appearances back in 2010, they've played the Spurs a total of 37 times, 25 in the regular season and 12 in the playoffs. The total win-loss record in those games? 19-18 in favor of San Antonio. Total margin of victory, across all 37 games? 85 points, or about 2.3 per game.

In the regular season, it's 13-12 Spurs. The total margin of victory in those games is 49 points, just under two per game. The two postseason series they've played during that time have each resulted in 4-2 wins, first for OKC in 2012 and then for the Spurs in 2014. San Antonio outscored OKC by 36 points across the 12-game set, an average of 3.0 per game. This includes the two games Serge Ibaka missed with an injury during the 2014 Western Conference Finals, two games the Spurs won by a combined 52 points. What I'm saying is that they play each other very close.

Injury-related absences have affected this rivalry a lot. Of those 37 games, only 18 have been played with both teams at something resembling full strength—i.e. with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Ibaka, and James Harden/Kendrick Perkins all active for the Thunder; and Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Kawhi Leonard (from 2011-12 on) all active for the Spurs. The Spurs hold a 10-8 series lead in those games, taking six of eight regular season contests with everyone healthy, and the Thunder claiming victory in six of 10 such postseason matchups.

Here's the thing about all that history, though: Only two of the 37 games include all the players that should be active for this series. The Spurs and Thunder played four times this season, splitting the series 2-2. But Parker, Duncan, Ginobili, Leonard, and LaMarcus Aldridge all sat out the March 26 meeting, while Durant, Westbrook, and Ibaka didn't play in the April 12 regular season finale.

It's extremely difficult to tell what to expect from a potential seven-game series based off two games, especially given that one of them took place on the first night of the season. Instead, let's look at the skills of the players involved and the strategies the coaches seem likely to employ.

While the Thunder and Spurs finished the regular season right next to each other in the offensive efficiency rankings, the two teams go about getting their points in extremely different ways. Oklahoma City's offense is based on creating one-on-one opportunities for their best offensive talents: Durant and Westbrook and, when he's in the game, Enes Kanter.

Durant's combination of height and shooting ability make him nigh impossible to stop one-on-one. He's like Peak Dirk Nowitzki with more off-the-dribble wiggle. Luckily for the Spurs, they have the best wing stopper in the league in Leonard, who is fresh off his second consecutive Defensive Player of the Year award. If anyone can stop Durant … well, it might be that no one can stop Durant, but if anyone can really bother him, it's Leonard. Leonard's length, strength, comprehensive knowledge of angles and tendencies, and ability to smother his man without fouling make him the perfect foil to KD's slithery exploits.

More broadly, the Thunder's offensive system plays somewhat into San Antonio's hands in this matchup, as most of Leonard's work against Durant figures to be done in a one-on-one context, whether on the ball or off it. Because he can largely handle that matchup by his lonesome, it allows the rest of his teammates to focus on stepping Westbrook, and by extension, the rest of the Thunder offense.

Westbrook cannot be guarded by Tony Parker. That's just a fact. The Spurs will almost certainly cross-match Danny Green onto Westbrook, a strategy they've gone to in this matchup before. (The Thunder provide a convenient hiding spot for Parker in shooting guard Andre Roberson, who is an extraordinarily reluctant shooter and barely needs to be guarded on the perimeter. The same is largely true of backup Dion Waiters, an extremely not-reluctant shooter who admittedly played quite well in the first round.) Green will have plenty of help wrangling the Point Godzilla; Duncan, LaMarcus Aldridge, Boris Diaw, and even David West figure to spend plenty of time hedging in Westbrook's general direction.

Westbrook controls the ball more than any other Thunder player, and he most often works off ball screens from Steven Adams, Ibaka, or Kanter, a trio of talented bigs with whom Westbrook shares good chemistry. Adams and Kanter roll to the rim far more often than they pop out for jumpers, while Ibaka prefers to pop behind the three-point arc or, more often, short-roll himself into the area right above the free-throw line. Westbrook's primary option off their screens is to jet to the basket, but he's also more than willing to hit the brakes and pull up, or to thread the needle to hit his bigs in stride. Devote too much attention to him and the bigs, though, and he'll fire a pass to KD or an open shooter in the corner. He sees all the angles these days.

Kanter, in particular, could be a whale to deal with for San Antonio's backup bigs. He is quick and powerful in the post, especially when given ample time there. He's a prime candidate to be taken advantage of on the other end, though, and that's exactly what happened when the two teams squared off during the regular season. Kanter averaged 15.8 points and 14.8 rebounds in four games against the Spurs this season, but San Antonio scored 12.1 points more per 100 possessions when he was in the game.

The Thunder defense in general seems especially vulnerable to the way the Spurs go about their offense. OKC finished the regular season just outside the top-10 in defensive efficiency—typically the line of demarcation for true contenders—but they were extremely inconsistent on that end after the first 30 or so games. After the All-Star break, they prevented points at a level equivalent to a Bucks defense that ranked 22nd on the year. They also locked down much harder at home than they did on the road—their defense was 6.8 points per 100 possessions better in Chesapeake Energy Arena than in other arenas, a differential surpassed only by the Lakers and Jazz.

It's not just Kanter, either. Westbrook makes some spectacular plays, but he gambles himself out of position a ton. Against a team as precise as the Spurs, a bad gamble is almost certain to result in a basket, especially if it allows Parker to get into the paint, draw help, and find a teammate open elsewhere on the floor. Parker doesn't have the same elite quickness he once did, and he can be kept out of the paint by a team that nails its positioning. Against one that doesn't, he's as big a menace as ever.

That slight slowing on Parker's part is why the Spurs reoriented their offense around post-ups for Aldridge and Leonard. San Antonio led the league in post-ups this season, per Synergy Sports, and led the league in mid-range field goal attempts as well. Still, they managed to finish with the third-most efficient offense in the NBA. Aldridge is still one of the toughest players to guard in the league when he gets the ball on his preferred left block, and Ibaka will have his hands full there. Predictability is often the enemy of success for NBA offenses, so it helps (for San Antonio's purposes) that the Spurs have expanded LMA's comfort zone to include areas other than that left block.

Leonard, for his part, turned into an absolute monster this season. He led the league in three-point shooting for half the year, and ultimately finished nine made free-throws short of a 50-40-90 season. He emerged as a vicious post-up player as well, punishing any smaller player with his size and bigger ones with quickness. He's not necessarily an elite one-on-one creator from the top of the offense, but put him closer to the basket and he's awfully hard to stop. Getting him the ball with hand-offs, on cuts, or off screens helps him get into the paint, and he rarely misses when he makes it to the rim.

These Spurs don't have quite as big an army of shooters as the typical San Antonio team over the last few years, but it's dangerous to leave any of Green, Patty Mills, Ginobili, or even Diaw open for too long. They'll knock down the shot or simply keep the assembly line of pinpoint passes moving to create an opportunity elsewhere. It takes perfect rotations made with perfect timing to throw a kink into the Spurs machine. The Thunder will have to pick it up for the next two weeks if they want to be that team. It's easier said than done, and it's not even all that easy to say. But it should be fun to watch them try.