Internal Affairs: The OKC Thunder Grow Up Together

- Karan Madhok / @hoopistani

There are NBA teams that buy All-Star players, and then there are those that grow them. In a league where making ‘superteams’ and ‘Big Threes’ has become an essential path to success, it is refreshing to see that a team like the Oklahoma City Thunder – who currently hold the best record in the league – have built a winning squad the old-fashioned way: by patiently watching their team grow together.

But to tell the story of The Thunder versus the The Superteams we must first go back to the Summer of 2007 and to the Boston Celtics.

June 2007. The Boston Celtics didn’t always enjoy the fame and success that they’ve had for the past few seasons: they had to create it with some ingenuity by their GM five years ago. Finishing with the worst record in the league during the 2006-07 season, the Celtics had the best chance at a top pick in the NBA draft and to bag either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, two of the hottest young talents coming out of college. But the Draft Lottery didn’t favour the ‘Luck of the Irish’, and the Celtics had to settle for the fifth pick. Oden went first that year to the Portland Trail Blazers; Durant went second to the Seattle SuperSonics. But Boston, hungry to end over 15 years of mediocrity, were determined to make a move.

They did that by trading their fifth pick – Jeff Green – to the Sonics, along with Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West, in return for Ray Allen. A month later, the Celtics sent five more players plus two draft picks to Minnesota to bring superstar Kevin Garnett to Boston and team him up with Allen and Paul Pierce to make the NBA’s most formidable ‘Big Three’. The Celtics won a championship a year later and the ‘Superteam’ era was ignited.

That same year, the Lakers traded away small pieces to pair Pau Gasol with Kobe Bryant. Between then and now, the Heat brought LeBron James and Chris Bosh to team up with their own All-Star, Dwyane Wade; the Knicks completely restructured their roster between 2010 to 2011 to include Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, and Tyson Chandler; and the Clippers invested big in pairing Blake Griffin with Chris Paul.

Meanwhile, back in 2007, the Sonics suffered almost every way imaginable. They finished the 2007-08 season at the bottom of the West with a 20-62 record and they had to say goodbye to city of Seattle. Luckily, the future was looking brighter than the past: they moved to Oklahoma City and were reborn as The Thunder, they won the fourth pick of the 2008 draft and picked the talented guard Russell Westbrook, and with the 24th pick, brought in the athletic Serge Ibaka. Durant won a rookie of the year award, and Jeff Green became an important cog in the puzzle.

A year in Oklahoma City didn’t improve their record much (23 wins in 2008-09), but it helped form a bond between Durant, Westbrook, Green, and Ibaka. With another high pick in 2009 (third), the Thunder selected James Harden. A few weeks in the season, they traded for another rookie – Eric Maynor – to backup Westbrook at the point. And this is when the boom happened: The Thunder won an incredible 50 games in 2009-10, sneaking in to eighth place in the West and stretching the eventual champs Lakers before finally losing in six games.

A year later, while the rest of the league attempted to ‘super’ themselves, the Thunder returned with the same super-young core which was now ready to put the scare into the West. But this year, they made their first (and so far, only) major shake-up of the Durant-era: The Thunder sent Jeff Green to the team that originally drafted him – the Celtics – in return for Kendrick Perkins. By the end of the year, OKC (55 wins) had won almost as many games as Boston (56). By the time the playoffs arrived, they were definitely the better team, going as far as the Western Conference Finals and losing to the eventual champs – this time, the Mavericks.

We’re now in the 2011-12 season, and OKC’s patience over the last five years to keep their core players instead of trading in for other stars definitely seems to have paid off. For the past few decades, a different, veteran team - the San Antonio Spurs - have used a similar formula by bringing Robinson, Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili to win several championships.

Now, the majority of the OKC Thunder squad consists of players who have been with the Sonics/Thunder franchise since their rookie season: Nick Collision (since 2003), Kevin Durant (2007), Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka (2008), James Harden and Eric Maynor (2009), and Cole Aldrich (2010). Instead of buying talent, Thunder GM Sam Presti has stuck with his team and his coach Scotty Brooks for all these years, letting them develop team chemistry and fondness for playing for each other together. As they have grown, so has the status of the team.

OKC is still one of the youngest teams in the league, but they already have several years of experience playing together. And now, four years after being amongst the worst in the league, they have a chance to finish the season as the best. With youth and togetherness on their side, the Thunder have the brightest future of them all.