If ever there was a game both teams deserved to lose, it was the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 105-104 potentially series-swinging win over the Los Angles Clippers Tuesday night.

On a night, Thunder forward Kevin Durant shot 6-22 from the field. It looked like a guaranteed Thunder loss with the Clips up 7 and 42 ticks remaining.

It was a night where the last two minutes set basketball back 20 years. In the end, the Thunder played less bad than the Clippers to make enough plays to win.

Kevin Durant hit a big 3-ball, despite his shooting woes, to cut the lead down to 4 points with just over 40 seconds left.

Thunder guard Russell Westbrook, who was the only reason the Thunder survived the night, had a big deflection and steal down 2 to give OKC a chance they never deserved. Westbrook finished his night with 38 points, 6 assists and 5 rebounds.

Guard Reggie Jackson merely existed to pick up Westbrook’s steal and somehow maintain possession of the ball, but he had help with that one.

In a wacky game with terrible late game decision making by both teams, it seems only fair the refs would add their mark to the stink.

After Jackson picked up the ball, he drove to the rim (with Kevin Durant calling for the ball, I might add) and perhaps was fouled. No foul was called.

Instead, the ball glided out of bounds, clearly off Jackson, to anyone with eyes not named
Scott Brooks.

Whether it was a make-up call within the replay system or just bad (clutch) camera work shown to the officials, somehow the refs decided they saw what Brooks claimed to see: out on the Clippers, Thunder basketball.

“Everybody knows it was our ball. I think the bottom line is they thought it was a foul, so they made up for it,” said Clippers’ head coach Doc Rivers, “In my opinion, let’s take away replay.”

The rest was history.

Westbrook took an ill-advised 3-point attempt. Clipper guard Chris Paul fouled him on the ill-advised 3-point attempt. Westbrook knocked down all three free throws. Paul didn’t even get a shot up with a chance to win the game now down a single point, and voila the Clippers control of the series disappeared.

It was the only way a game like tonight could end with an ill-advised turnover.
Even Rivers, as livid after the game as he was, couldn’t deny the mistakes his team made to cost themselves the huge victory, even while making sure to lob in how bad the refs screwed them at every turn.

“Now, we did our own stuff. We should have never lost that game,” said Rivers. “We stopped playing with three minutes left. We were milking the clock. We turned the ball over. We come out of a timeout; we were supposed to foul Durant before he took the 3, so we made a comedy of errors.”

So what do you take away from a game like this? Who has control?

It could be the Thunder just stomped out the Clippers’ best hope of winning the series. They withstood the Clippers’ best punch.

A game where Durant shot as poorly as he did, combined with no Thunder player touching double digits other than KD and Westbrook, should be a Clippers win. It wasn’t.

Then, there’s Chris Paul who took full responsibility in the post-game press conference to the point where he looked like he needed supervision until game 6 is played.

“Everything that happened at the end is on me,” said Paul, who repeatedly mutttere “this one’s bad” after responding to questions.

How do you recover from a loss like that?

Maybe, you don’t. Maybe you do.

After watching two NBA teams execute down the stretch like these two teams did in game 5, how can anyone know for sure what is going to happen in game 6?
Durant was quick to point to the plays the Thunder made and rightfully so.

“We ain’t just going to talk about the last plays. How about the 6 plays before those fouls that we made to put us in position?” said Durant. “So a lot of people don’t want to talk about that. They want to talk about what happened at the end of the game.”

The Thunder made plays you can’t deny that.

“It’s kind of a shame people are going to try to take it from us because of the last few calls, but sometimes that’s how the game goes,” said Durant.
Still, you need luck. The Thunder got all the luck they could stand in game 5 but if you think the Thunder earned that luck over the Clippers, I would encourage you to re-watch every painful minute of game 5.

Neither team deserved to win, but just like when neither team deserves to lose, someone does anyway.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess? Let’s just pray it isn’t whatever game 5 was.