The Thunder have risen again

Ascension to the highest throne once looked inevitable, but wasn't. Is this different?

Good morning. We have an essay on the Thunder ahead of the final night of the play-in tournament. Let's basketball.

The first rise of the Oklahoma City Thunder was simultaneously predictable and sudden. After the team tanked out of Seattle with a rookie Kevin Durant, they drafted Russell Westbrook and James Harden. By the time Harden joined the team in 2009-10, Durant was baked as an all-timer: he finished No. 2 in MVP voting that season as the Thunder went from 23 wins to 50. A year later, Westbrook had joined Durant on the All-NBA team, the Thunder won 55 games and made the Western Conference Finals (beating the post-Melo Nuggets and early Grit 'n Grind Grizzlies on the way). A year later: the equivalent of 58 games in a lockout-shortened season, more accolades for Durant, Westbrook and Harden and a trip all the way to the Finals.

That initial jump to 50 wins with a young roster and a really young star line-up turned lots of heads, and had lots of us hyping the future of the Thunder. Then going from their first playoff berth to winning two rounds made it look like something truly special was brewing. The loss in the 2012 Finals was thorough, but it sure felt like Oklahoma City was on the cusp of winning multiple championships.

Of course, the Thunder didn't win any. Financial considerations led to Sam Presti trading Harden that summer, and while OKC maintained its excellence averaging 55 wins over the next four seasons, they never won a title in that configuration. The Thunder made the conference finals in 2014 and 2016. In the former season, they merely ran into one of the most underappreciated titans of the 2000s, the 2014 Spurs, who won 62 games and smoked almost everyone in the playoffs. In 2016, we met Game 6 Klay. Durant left that summer and the Thunder immediately exited the championship conversation.

Last year they returned, winning 57 games. There wasn't a gobsmacking 1-year rise based on the arrival of a couple stars this time: there were two straight years of gobsmacking rises – from 24 to 40 wins in 2023 and from 40 to 57 wins in 2024. And the centrifugal star leading the way, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, had been here since 2019. What changed is the seriousness of the franchise in wanting to compete and the addition of high-quality young supplemental players.