Oklahoma City Thunder: Last two games important

The Thunder is cemented into the second seed, but that doesn’t mean its final two regular-season games are meaningless. How the Thunder does against Sacramento on Tuesday night and Denver on Wednesday night could decide the NBA championship.

The Thunder and the Heat went into Tuesday night with the same record, 46-18. The Thunder owns the tiebreaker over Miami, so if the teams finish with the same record, or the Thunder finishes with a better record than the Heat, Oklahoma City would host a potential NBA Finals Game 7 involving those squads. Of course, it’s a long road for both to make it to the NBA Finals, particularly the Thunder, which has got to play better than its April performance.

But still. Last year, Scotty Brooks blew off the regular-season finale, resting his starters in the fourth quarter against Milwaukee. The Thunder blew a big lead and lost.

I wouldn’t recommend that this year, though Brooks claims it hasn’t entered into his thinking.

“No,” Brooks said when asked if he had considered the Miami implications. “No, no. We just focus on game-to-game and day-to-day. Wherever we end up, we have to live with the results. It’s something I haven’t thought about.”

Brooks said strategizing for scenarios almost two months in the future “is not how I operate. Not how our team operates. It’s fun to think about those terms, but you can’t be that arrogant” that the Thunder is Finals-bound.