“I thought the series forced our guys to dig down deeper,” coach Billy Donovan said. “I think we can dig down even deeper. The more you get challenged and pushed like that, I think the more you have a chance to grow and flower. So that's what it is to me.”

But the seven-game battle with the Warriors, which should have ended in six with a Thunder triumph, will remain vital to the Thunder.

The Thunder had a great playoff run. It won 55 games, beat a team that won 67 games and dang near beat a team that had won 73 games. The Thunder fell short because of bad timing. To reach the Finals, the Thunder was required to produce two major upsets. Only one was in the cards.

It was a great lesson. The Thunder physically was capable. But it missed winning the West by a whisker, and that whisker was mental. The Thunder blinked in the final five minutes of Game 6. The Thunder stayed tough virtually the entire series, except those five minutes.

Russell Westbrook said the Thunder has “a great team, a lot of guys that can contribute in a lot of different ways as you've seen, a lot of guys that improved over the season, not just starting in the playoffs, but gotten better mentally, and I think that's the main part, not just physically but mentally gotten better and made us a better team.”

But, Westbrook admitted, OKC can improve mentally. “Mental toughness,” he said. “I think we've gotten very, very well at that point, but I think to make the next step, we have to constantly do that throughout the whole season, not just late in the playoffs, because I thought we turned the page when it got to this time of year, but I think if we constantly keep that from start to finish, it makes it easier for us in certain situations.”

The Thunder's fourth-quarter troubles were well-documented during the season. OKC consistently did not play well down the stretch of games. That mostly changed in the playoffs. But old habits are hard to break. It's hard to stay on the wagon. Most improvements are not a total ascension. Some up, some down, a lot up, a little down. A little down got the Thunder at the worst possible time.