When the Oklahoma City Thunder won the Western Conference and advanced to the NBA Finals in 2012, it was supposed to spell an era of imminent dominance rarely seen in pro basketball. With Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Serge Ibaka, the Thunder had one of the most promising young cores ever assembled. Was Oklahoma City the league’s next dynasty? To believe otherwise seemed irrational.
Three years later, the Thunder have yet to deliver on so much unprecedented potential with a championship. But this team still has ample time to do just that, as its stirring 112-106 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in the debut of coach Billy Donovan made abundantly clear.
Before Oklahoma City dispatched of the revamped Spurs on Wednesday night behind Westbrook’s 33 points and 10 assists, Durant touched on what he believes separates the league’s most successful, consistent franchises from the rest: patience.
Kevin Durant on the importance of continuity and how the Thunder and Spurs are unique in that regard: pic.twitter.com/2URMwa2ZWH
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) October 28, 2015
Many believe the Thunder’s failure to win a title and surround the 2014 MVP with an upper-echelon supporting cast could be what prompts his departure from the bible belt next summer.
Westbrook, Ibaka, and veteran role player Nick Collison have been the only mainstays during Durant’s eight-year tenure in Oklahoma City. Key ancillary cogs like Harden and Kevin Martin came and went, while general manager Sam Presti hasn’t exactly taken full advantage of the draft assets compiled from the trade that launched the former to superstardom with the Houston Rockets.
More than anything else, though, health is what has kept the Thunder from raising a Larry O’Brien Trophy. The team’s Big Three haven’t lost a postseason series when fully healthy since the 2012 Finals. Westbrook was absent with a torn meniscus when his team was eliminated by the Memphis Grizzlies in the conference semifinals one season after winning the West; a calf injury caused Ibaka to miss the first two games of Oklahoma City’s epic tilt with the Spurs in the 2014 conference Finals; and the franchise sat on the playoff sidelines last spring for the first time in five years due to foot issues that kept Durant from all but 27 regular season games.
Teams shouldn’t be able to surface from the depths of three consecutive seasons plagued by injuries while maintaining realistic championship aspirations, but that’s what the Thunder have done. Why? Precisely because their timeline to perennial contention was so uniquely accelerated.
Durant was only 23-years-old when he faced off against LeBron James on the league’s biggest stage. Westbrook was 23, too, and playing just his fourth season in the league, while Ibaka was a year younger than his superstar teammates and just one year removed from coming off the bench.
Oklahoma City, basically, should have had no business meeting Miami in 2012. Its best players were multiple seasons from their primes, and peripheral pieces like Kendrick Perkins and Thabo Sefolosha had only just begun their own. The 31-year-old Collison and 37-year-old Derek Fisher were the lone veteran voices on a team that beat the league’s previous pair of champions and a franchise that had won four titles in the previous 13 seasons on its way to the Finals.
But the Thunder’s talent was just as obvious as it was precocious, and it was hard to believe the individual games of Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka wouldn’t grow by leaps and bounds. And here’s the thing: they did. Durant wasn’t half the playmaker three years ago that he is today; Westbrook has made immense strides as a game-manager and overall decision-maker; and Ibaka’s 205 three-point attempts in 2014-15 were 202 more than he tried in 2011-12.
Oklahoma City’s half decade among the league hierarchy makes it hard to believe, but now is the time when this team should be emerging as a dominant force – as its three top players are fully evolved and have had ample experience on the postseason playing field. But the Thunder, like always, are the exception instead to the rule, and the league been spoiled as a result of that reality.
After dominating in Wednesday’s season-opening victory and watching Durant get firmly outplayed by the ascendant Kawhi Leonard, Westbrook was asked by ESPN’s Doris Burke what it was like to watch the 6’10 forward struggle in his highly-anticipated return to the floor.
“Kevin’s the best player in the world,” he said.
That might be true now, but it certainly wasn’t when Oklahoma City last advanced to the Finals. And if Durant and his team continue exercising the patience they have in the interim, that possibility and many other hopeful ones could propel the Thunder to the only heights they’ve yet to reach – for not just this season, but many beyond, too.
