Follow the NBA — or anything, really — for too long, and your brain gets sentenced to myopia. You think about the game one way, honoring outworn rules and traditions and beliefs, shunning innovation as radical behavior. You can read hundreds of quotes about change and arrive only at the submissive conclusion that it’s too difficult an aspiration.
That’s partly why, despite its burgeoning greatness, the Oklahoma City Thunder has been greeted with skepticism until now. It defies two NBA axioms that we refuse to let go.
Young teams don’t win championships.
And in a league full of skilled players, it’s perilous to rely on a defensive system that overemphasizes ball pressure and creating turnovers.
In the face of convention, the Thunder has fashioned a distinct style of play by turning those no-nos into its greatest assets. Its youth is a blessing. When the season began, its average age was 24.7. If you limit it to the 14 players who have appeared in playoff games, it shrinks to 24.4. Only two players have reached 30, and the only “old” rotation player is Alex Caruso, who turned 31 in February. Teammates playfully call him “OG,” which is slang for original gangster. Or just old guy. Caruso is still in his prime, but born in 1994, he and reserve forward Kenrich Williams have at least three years on every other player on the roster.
Still, the Thunder finished 68-14 during the regular season, tied for the sixth-highest winning percentage (.829) in league history. OKC is the youngest team to win 60 games, and if it defeats the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals, it would be the second youngest to be crowned champion, just a hair older than the 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers.
That team, led by a 24-year-old Bill Walton, went from 49-33 to postseason glory during a period of NBA parity similar to the current one. But the Thunder, which outscored opponents by a record 12.9 points over the first 82 games, is four victories from completing one of the best single-season performances the league has witnessed.
Oklahoma City’s coach, Mark Daigneault, is a creative former Connecticut student manager who refined his strategies by walking up nearly every rung of the basketball ladder. The players are young and focused, versatile and unselfish, exciting and overpowering. They’re likable, cute even, right down to standing as a group during those corny postgame interviews.
While celebrating their five-game romp through the Western Conference finals, players piled towels atop the shoulders of Daigneault during an interview. As he relayed all the superlatives about his players, he paused to grin and joke, “They’re idiots.”
Before this run, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green suggested the Thunder wasn’t serious, too interested in its “bromance” to instill “fear” in opponents. Many ran with the notion that, to be so good on paper, Oklahoma City isn’t scary.
Who knew the Thunder had to direct a horror movie to hoist a trophy?
OKC players are serious competitors who act childish upon victory. They’re mature when they need to be, which enables them to turn all that youth into the energy necessary to play a relentless brand of basketball. It starts on the defensive end. A year ago, when the Thunder improved from 40-42 to 57-25, it was a top-five defensive team. This season, it enjoyed an 11-win improvement while leading the league in defensive efficiency. It is an elite offensive squad — with an unrivaled ball-hawking defense.
The Thunder forced a league-best 17 turnovers per game en route to that 68-14 record. In the playoffs, it has been even better, forcing 18 turnovers and scoring 23.8 points per game off opponent miscues. When challenged, Oklahoma City has been at its best. After the Denver Nuggets pushed it to a Game 7 in the second round, the Thunder responded with a defensive effort that forced 23 turnovers that led to 37 points in a 125-93 rout.
St. John’s Coach Rick Pitino posted about his admiration of the Thunder’s defense last week. Pitino, a Hall of Famer who has coached in college and the NBA, mentioned that he has “never” shown his NCAA teams video of NBA defenses in more than 40 years of coaching. Offense, absolutely. But defense? There was little from the NBA style of defending that he could incorporate in the college game.
“Until this past season,” Pitino wrote.
He showed clips of the Thunder during multiple film sessions per week.
“Their switching, loading up to help, and rotations are awesome,” he wrote. “And they’re still so young!!!”
OKC doesn’t do any single thing in an unprecedented way, but Daigneault has created something novel with his fusion of various concepts. The Thunder’s personnel also makes it different. No team has five perimeter defenders the caliber of defensive superstar Lu Dort, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Cason Wallace and Caruso. Power forward Chet Holmgren is among the league’s best rim protectors. Center Isaiah Hartenstein, an offseason free agent addition, is the perfect fit. No matter who’s in the lineup, there’s little drop-off.
Versatility and discipline are the Thunder’s biggest strengths. It starts big and swallows all the space with its size and length. Then it goes small and turns into a defense that swarms, scrambles and recovers without many missed assignments.
Traditionally, defensive mistakes are what make a coach leery to give minutes to inexperienced players. Despite having only four players with more than five years of NBA experience, Oklahoma City attacks with veteran-like attention to detail.
“It’s hard to process because it was so different,” Minnesota Timberwolves all-star guard Anthony Edwards said of the OKC defense. “It was always different every time. Heavy in the gaps. Sometimes trips the ball screens. Sometimes don’t. They remind me of an AAU defensive team, just run and jump, fly around.”
The Thunder is a team-building showpiece. It’s a reflection of General Manager Sam Presti’s willingness to think differently. In 2007, Presti was 30 years old when he was hired to rebuild the Seattle SuperSonics. He was by far the youngest leader of an NBA basketball operations department. For the past 18 years, he has led the organization through it all: relocation; the creation of the star-studded MVP trio of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden; the premature departures and teardown of a memorable team that never got over the championship hump; the trades that stockpiled a preposterous collection of draft picks; two painful rebuilding years in which the team went a combined 46-108; and a reconstruction that has led to a level of dominance few saw coming.
This team is Presti’s best work. When he was named executive of the year last month, it felt like both a season award and a recognition of his longtime stewardship of the roster. From his introduction 18 years ago, Presti has preached meticulous team-building, focusing on substance over style and aiming to create a basketball laboratory in which young players with the right mindset walked into a developmental safe space. Presti has created a culture of competition and experimentation, and to sustain it, the front office remains dedicated to looking deeply into players’ makeup rather than following trends.
That’s how you build a team without a defensive weak link. That’s how you trade Paul George in a package whose return includes Gilgeous-Alexander and watch him grow into an MVP because you didn’t impose any limitations. That’s how you build a talented team despite having just one player drafted in the top five (Holmgren, No. 2 in 2022).
Right now, the Thunder is glued to the moment. Two years ahead of schedule, it has manipulated time in its favor.
Old basketball stereotypes don’t apply to OKC. It’s something new. And unusual. Scary, too.
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