Thirteen years later, the Thunder finally rolls

A new, simpatico cast and a commitment to defense brings OKC an NBA title.

Chet Holmgren

Thirteen years ago the Oklahoma City Thunder was not so much a team as a trend. Or maybe a train, gathering speed.

Kevin Durant was 23, Russell Westbrook and James Harden 22. Durant was second in MVP voting, Westbrook was all-defense and 2nd team all-NBA, and Harden was the sixth man of the year. Serge Ibaka was runnerup Defensive Player of the Year and led the league in blocks. The Thunder eliminated San Antonio in six games to get to the NBA Finals, then was betrayed by its inexperience in a five-game loss to Miami, which had its own Trio of Brio. But the future seemed set. Major NBA history was ready to be written, right where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.

On Thursday night the Thunder finally nailed down that NBA title, in Game 7 of the best NBA Finals that most of you never saw. It did so with maturity and detail and a little bit of luck, plus the kind of resolve that you only get through 10 or so years of postseasons.

Except that this Thunder was still among the youngest teams in the league, and the youngest to play in the NBA Finals since Bill Walton’s Portland TrailBlazers in 1977, another small-market band of brothers which won a championship. It became the seventh NBA champion in seven years. Its next job is to reverse that trend, too.

Oh, the OGs from OKC are still around. Durant is bouncing through a gallery of desperate franchises, leaving a trail of fired coaches and never seeming happy. His next destination is Houston, apparently living on the one-player-away theory, trading Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and a battalion of draft picks to Phoenix on Sunday.

Harden piled up stats for the Clippers this year but as usual, came up empty in a Game 7. Westbrook was Denver’s first man off the bench. Each has been an MVP, with Harden the last American player to win that award, in 2018. They’ll be in the Hall of Fame someday but Durant has played on six NBA teams and Harden and Westbrook five, with a combined nine scoring titles but only two championships, both when Durant piggy-backed his way onto the Golden State machine.

The newest champs beat the unspeakably game Indiana Pacers, 103-91, Sunday night, a win that certainly was facilitated when Indiana leader Tyrese Haliburton sprawled and began pounding the floor, seven minutes in. The strained calf that he was trying to withstand turned out to be a grim warning sign. He suffered an Achilles injury that likely will cancel his 2026-27. The Pacers took that bullet in the teeth and pounded away to a 1-point halftime lead, the same way they had ignored signs, omens and scoreboards on the way to this point. But 48 minutes is too long a time to lock out reality.

The Thunder dominated the second half with an epic, if customary, second-half performance. It won it, 56-43, and held the accurate Pacers to 40.5 percent shooting. In the third quarter it had no turnovers and forced seven. For the game OKC turned 21 Indiana turnovers into 32 points, and the Pacers could only get seven takeaways of their own. It was a series-long theme, one of the few that held up. Really, it was the type of compelling series, with ascending and unpredictable chapters, played with both passion and respect. It would have become an Instant 30 for 30 if one team was wearing purple and gold and the other was wearing Kelly green.

Haliburton was missed most in the third quarter. T.J. McConnell, the warrior of a sixth man who had hurt the Thunder throughout, took over the Pacers’ offense, to excess. He scored 12 of their 20 points, took seven of their 17 shots, and had no assists and three turnovers. There was a 13-minute stretch when McConnell was Indiana’s only scorer. While he was near-unstoppable, Pascal Siakam was getting two third-quarter shots, and the whole crew seemed out of sync when McConnell had to go out. No knock on McConnell, of course, because he owes his 10-year NBA career to banzai basketball, but Haliburton could have made this one of the best Game 7s ever, and his injury was a shame on several levels.

Had he stayed, was there one more midnight ride left in him? Maybe, but the Thunder defense is a constant. Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein block out the sun at the rim, and Lu Dort’s defense is known locally as the Dorture Chamber. Alex Caruso comes off the bench bearing many gifts, including the willingness to guard all positions. Down the stretch Sunday, Indiana encountered a maze as soon as it crossed half-court, and OKC maneuvered the Pacers into coffin corners and would not release them until they got the ball as a ransom.

Haliburton’s exit left the star turn to league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who did not disappoint. He shot 8 for 27, yeah, but he also had 12 assists, and got to the foul line 12 times. He became the first player in 25 years (Shaquille O’Neal) to win an NBA scoring title and a championship in the same season. It’s hard to envision him getting much better, but it’s easy to see the unlimited skies for Chet Holmgren, who has only played 114 games in three years and does not average 30 minutes per. He was a marauder on Sunday, with 18 points, eight rebounds and five blocks, and innumerable discouragements for Indiana’s drivers.

Even with those two, the Thunder is a repudiation of the star-maker machinery that obsesses the NBA. Sure, SGA and Jalen Williams and Holmgren are headline players, but they were developed at home. They weren’t part of the grass-is-greener siren song that has crashed so many other franchises.

Six years ago Kawhi Leonard entered the marketplace, and the Lakers and Clippers and his own Toronto Raptors came on down. The Clippers wound up with the showcase, after Leonard suggested he might sign if they somehow got hold of Paul George, who was at Oklahoma City. Sam Presti, the former rapper and all-around Svengali who runs the Thunder, said sure. He also chose Gilgeous-Alexander, who had finished up a solid but not glittery rookie year with the Clippers. Since then the Clippers have reached one conference Final and gone no further, and Leonard has averaged 44 games per season.

Deals like that have shoved the Thunder into a delicious quandary. Their executives will soon have to perform self-triage, because of too much talent for their roster. They have three picks in the first round of next week’s draft. They have the potential for three more in 2027, two more in 2028 and two more in 2029. In all those years and in every year through 2031, they have their own first-rounder. So they have the resources to trade for a disaffected superstar, even though that’s not their style, and still preserve their nucleus.

More difficult will be preserving the “started-at-the-bottom-now-we’re-here” mentality. This team had one of the best seasons in the history of the game. It won 84 games, counting playoffs. But the players won’t easily forget harder times. Caruso, K. Williams and Dort were not drafted. Hartenstein was a second-round pick who’s 26 and has been with six franchises. J. Williams was the 12th pick in the 2022 draft, ten spots behind Holmgren, but he was no recruiting prize in high school. Santa Clara had to pry him away from Hofstra..

And even though the TV ratings don’t reflect it, the Thunder is nosing its way into the greater culture. Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren did an AT&T commercial this year,, and they added J. Williams for another one this year. Such is the reach of the NBA that you can indeed make a big name in a little big town. In this year’s ad, the three Thunder players are mortified when they all wear the same basic outfit on a runway walk. That resounds with Williams, whose fashion tastes are wholly his own, right down to the white-framed glasses he wore in high school.

Steph Curry is 37, LeBron James is 40, Jayson Tatum is already out for next season and the Former OKC Three are in career freefall. The new boss has a chance to be an emperor, with new clothes.