Playoff basketball is back in Oklahoma City. And despite the parallels to the Baby Thunder from a generation ago, the new iteration of this team is its own beast.
“Nobody is making a YouTube mix of all your badass screens with a Rick Ross track playing over it.” —Nick Collison
Game 1 of the Thunder’s first-round series against the Pelicans was this past Sunday, April 21. Five years to the day from OKC’s last home playoff game, a 111-98 Game 4 loss to the Trail Blazers in 2019. Terrance Ferguson played 33 minutes. Raymond Felton was an important rotation piece. Hard times. It’s not what you want. Vibes in the dumpster, right next to the hope. Then Dame hits the wave shot at the end of Game 5. Series over. Russell Westbrook and Paul George were traded that offseason. Those were not the days.
But maybe these will be? After some time in the dreaded middle and a subsequent multiyear tankathon, my beloved Thunder have returned to the playoffs armed with a 1-seed and home court against everyone not named the Celtics. It feels like a reintroduction to the big time, and I wanted to come back home to Oklahoma to be in the building, experience the pageantry of a home playoff environment in person for the first time.
I went to the game with my friend J. Coming up Oklahoma City Boulevard we could see the Omni all glassy on the left, pics of current Thunder bench players plastered on banners along the face of the hotel. Isaiah Joe’s taking a jumper. Ousmane Dieng’s dribbling. Gordon Hayward’s about to turn the ball over. Beyond the hotel was Scissortail Park, pregame funtivities in full-swing, fans walking over in their gameday best. It was one of these premier spring days when the grass looks lime and the flowers all have fresh coats of paint, the vista brimming with blues and oranges.
We got dropped off just south of the arena. The first thing we saw when we hopped out of the Crosstrek was Thunder legend Nick Collison. And that’s too outrageous to be true, but somehow, against all odds, it did happen. Collison is the only player in Oklahoma City history to have his jersey retired, was with the organization his entire career, and is roundly considered to be the godfather of Thunder basketball. His hair has been deemed a state landmark and is, in my opinion, holy. He now works in the team’s front office. The way it went:
“Hey, Tyler,” J said. “Look over there.”
I did and saw God. He was on the other side of a construction zone, walking away from us, stepping with purpose, shining bright in business caszh. I asked a question I knew the answer to.
“Is that Nick Collison?”
And J said something I don’t remember because inside my head there was a fiesta. Trumpets, harps, electric guitars. A vuvuzela choir. Bunch of ahooga horns. I scrambled to pull my phone from my pocket to take a picture. By the time I did, he was about 75 yards away, and the attempt was pathetic.
That’s God on the left there. Sweatered up and strutting. I do not know where he was going. Maybe to check on his storage unit. Maybe to see a movie at Harkins right beside the U-Haul. In college, my friends and I saw Gran Torino there in winter 2009. Freezing outside. My buddy Dale showed up in a half shirt and weight-lifting gloves. I’m pretty sure he wore eye black too, but that might be the imagination talking. I remember thinking surely Eastwood would die soon. That was 15 Christmases ago. Clint’s still kicking, still posting pics on Twitter that’ve been watermarked to within an inch of their life. Captions like: “Attending the Warner Bros Dirty Harry Videogame Preview at E3, Los Angeles 05/10/2006. The Videogame was cancelled in 2007…” And Eastwood looks like he was recently punched in the face.
I almost described Clint’s Malpaso Productions hat, which means I’m way off track. Back to Hair Jordan. Collison was the steady hand throughout the Thunder’s first decade in Oklahoma City, a symbol of organizational continuity, a dude who stayed. All this, plus [placing soul on display] he’s one of my favorite basketball players of all time. When he announced his retirement I wrote a 900-word ode to his career for this very website. At least a third of it is about his hair, but still.
Now, in the lead-up to the Thunder’s playoff return, I’m staring at the legend himself. I want to take it as a good omen. I want to think the glory days are back. I’m going to put all of this in the piece, I tell myself. Because when you see Nick Collison in the wild, you have no choice but to go buy one of those vans with a PA system, cruise it to the nearest mountaintop, and scream the good news at the world.
A little under two hours before tip. We went inside.
“He’s like—he’s not like Magic Johnson at all—but he’s like Magic in that you can play him probably any of four positions, if not five. Playing the 2, he’s not going to get beat up, box to box, the whole game.” —P.J. Carlesimo on Kevin Durant
The first Oklahoma City Thunder basketball game happened on October 29, 2008. An 8 p.m. tipoff vs. the Bucks in the Bricktown cathedral formerly known as Ford Center. I was a sophomore in college and my friend Heath’s dad had two extra tickets, and invited me and another buddy to come with. Milwaukee won 98-87, a score that suggests a tighter game than the one that lives in my memory. Richard Jefferson, Chuck Villanueva, and Michael Redd each finished with 20. Charlie Bell was the leading scorer off the bench with 11. Tyronn Lue got 17 minutes. He would retire after the season, explore coaching. Shouts to the ghost of Joe Alexander.
Thunder-wise, I don’t remember much beyond my own excitement. I don’t remember where we sat, only that it was high. I think I wore an old combo Oklahoma City–New Orleans Hornets T-shirt? I remember four of the starters (Collison, Durant, Jeff Green, and Earl Watson) and had to look up the fifth, Johan Petro. I remember big minutes from Chris Wilcox and Desmond Mason, hectic minutes from a precocious young rookie named Russell Westbrook, and no burn whatsoever for Robert Swift. He was the only OKC player to not see the floor that night.
I remember Watson scored the first points in Thunder history. I remember wishing it had been Durant. The NBA was not new to OKC by then, the city having harbored the Hornets in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but that didn’t stop it from feeling surreal that there was a real, live professional basketball team in my state that I did not have to worry about leaving someday soon. The team seemed far from contention that night. I did not care. The offense was uninventive, stuck in the mud, lifeless. I did not care. Neither did anyone else. At least not from where I was sitting. The arena energy was very, “No worries! Just happy y’all are here!” The next summer, the Thunder would draft James Harden and Serge Ibaka and enter the speed-race era of Thunder U. A year after that, they would make the playoffs for the first time.
“He yelled in my face and he picked me up off the floor, so I just barked. I don’t know.” —Jalen Williams
Pregame highlights included almost spilling my Pibb on Pelicans play-by-play titan Joel Meyers and watching along as people ridiculed those on the jumbotron who thought themselves too cool to wear the free T-shirt hanging on every seat. Fans booed until the person gave in. This went on for a while. It did not get old. Other things seen: Chet’s knees. An old man taking a picture with TNT’s Stephanie Ready. He was smitten. She was kind. Jalen Williams cuts the bottom hem of his warm-up sweats. The laces for his Adidas are tied in loops the size of tortillas and every time they showed him on the jumbotron the whole place started barking.
I expected the arena to be loud. In postseasons past, the Thunder crowd has boomed through the television. Happy to report “loud” does not do it justice. A lawn mower is loud, but that sound does not overcome your whole being, reach inside your face, and throw a rave. This was a cave full of banshees. At its loudest, I felt like I was reentering earth’s atmosphere, riding bareback atop an exploding meteor.
Many sequences stand out. I will mention just one or two because I am withholding. We’ll get to the game-winner. But first, the barking. Barks have become a staple of OKC’s postgame interviews, multiple teammates gathered around the interviewee in celebration, interrupting and punctuating the answers with barks. Jalen Williams has led this movement with his whole chest. Fans don’t usually bark. They scream, clap, stomp, they chant the word defense, but barks don’t usually enter the mix. Those in attendance for Game 1 decided if it’s good enough for the team, it’s good enough for them, and commenced to bark their heads off.
This came to a peak in the third quarter. With 8:29 left, Williams and the Pels’ Jonas Valanciunas battled for a rebound that ended in a jump ball. Thing was, neither of them would let go. Williams, OKC’s electrifyingly smooth second-year wing, is listed at 6-foot-5 and 211 pounds. Valanciunas, the Pelicans’ starting center, is listed at 6-foot-11 and 265 pounds. As they wrestled over the ball, Valanciunas screamed hard and lifted Williams off the ground. Williams barked in his face.
I started laughing. After the refs got them to separate, Williams sauntered around the court, barked some more. The fans barked back. It’s a lot of barks, 18,000-plus joining in unison to woof their adulation.
For the next couple of minutes of game time, the arena was in a frenzy, absolutely booming. It sounded like someone was launching a space shuttle inside my head. I leaned over to J and screamed as loud as I could.
“This is crazy.”
He yelled back. No clue what he said.
“You got three of my favorite players in the league on that team, man. They’re fun to watch.” —Kobe Bryant
Oklahoma City’s first postseason appearance was in 2010. A 1-vs.-8 first-round matchup with the reigning champion Los Angeles Lakers. OKC shocked the basketball public by blowing the doors off the Lakers in Games 3 and 4 and sending the series back to L.A. tied 2-2. The Lakers handled business the next two games, with Pau Gasol tipping in a Kobe miss in the eleventh hour of Game 6 and effectively ending things. Thunder fans stayed in the arena after the final buzzer sounded, gave their team a standing ovation, all parties determined to see the series for the success it was. They were ahead of schedule and dangerous.
The first-generation Thunder developed in hyperdrive and skipped steps. The combination of Durant’s otherworldly scoring, Westbrook’s relentless attacking, and Harden’s artful playmaking merged together to create something beastly. They overwhelmed opponents with athleticism and competitiveness and a general disregard for the way things were supposed to go. Young teams aren’t supposed to thrive in the pressure cooker of the playoffs. They are supposed to struggle. A year after OKC’s postseason debut, they made the Western Conference finals. The year after that, they smoked the vaunted Spurs on their way to the Finals and it really felt like, “Oh, they are here now.” The baby Thunder lost the series 4-1 to the Heat, but it seemed like the first of many trips for the Thunder. Minor setback for major comeback. They were destined to rule. Four months and six days after the deciding Game 5, the Thunder traded Harden to Houston.
That did not seem to fit in the grand scheme of things. The Thunder still had rosters with enough juice when fully healthy, but the seams became more pronounced. The fit between Westbrook and Durant never completely meshed, and the margin for error got smaller. After 2014, OKC didn’t put together another injury-free playoff run until 2016, when the Thunder lost to the 73-9 Warriors in seven games in the Western Conference finals. Durant left for Golden State the next offseason and took with him any hopes for contention. There were some bright spots in the Westbrook-George pairing that came together a couple of years later, but the ceiling was never going to get as high as it was in the Durant days. No rings ever materialized. I already talked about the trades.
Because sometimes symmetry feels good, people get tempted to compare this current Thunder team with the old one. It’s not Thunder U: The Redux, but the situations aren’t without their similarities. Both squads featured three big-time talents that jelled together far quicker than anyone had reason to believe was possible. Both got people’s imaginations sprinting at the thought of what they could become with a little more seasoning. Both were long and rangy, liked to get out in transition and get to the rim. Both played an exciting brand of ball with multiple players capable of unleashing some move you have never seen before.
“I don’t think about them at all. They’ve done amazing things for this game, this city. Pioneers clearly. But trying to compare or draw comparisons doesn’t help us … None of them are on this basketball team. None of them can help us no matter how great they were in the past.” —Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, on whether he thinks about past Thunder teams
Despite some parallels, when taken in totality, this current Thunder squad is its own unique beast, much different from the Durant, Westbrook, Harden teams of yore. Some of the differences are basic. Old Thunder’s three best players were in year 3, year 2, and year 1 on their first trip to the postseason. None of them were big men and all of them were top-five picks. New Thunder, not so much on both counts.
Gilgeous-Alexander is 25 years old and in his sixth year in the league. He was an All-Star last year, an MVP candidate this year, and has played in the postseason twice before, just not with a majority of the current roster. The Clippers took him 11th in the 2018 draft. Holmgren and Williams were both drafted in 2022. Williams was taken 12th. After three college seasons at Santa Clara, he came into the league older than Durant, Westbrook, or Harden did. Holmgren was injured for the entirety of what was supposed to be his rookie season. He’s the only member of the new Thunder who was a top-five pick, Oklahoma City scooping him at no. 2.
More differences. Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams, and Holmgren make more sense together. The individual talent may not be quite to the level of three MVPs, but the sum of the parts on hand today might wind up a more potent mixture. There’s less positional overlap with the current three-headed monster, their games not as redundant, the offense better designed to accentuate the things at which they excel. Still more differences: the new three all work hard on the defensive end, are more willing to set screens, and know when to keep the ball moving. They involve each other in the action. The fit has fewer seams.
The new trifecta all had moments of splendor in Game 1. Williams did more than just bark. The playoff pressure was not too great for him. He made timely baskets all night, created for himself and others, finished with 19 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals in his first playoff action. Holmgren had 15 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 blocks, became the fifth guy in league history to go for 15-plus points, 10-plus boards, and 5-plus swats in their postseason debut, the last block happening late in crunch time. Larry Nance Jr. set a pick for CJ McCollum and rolled, caught the ball in the lane. He tried to scoop in a layup over Chet’s helping hands but Holmgren high-pointed the shot and sent it packing with the tips of his fingers. It was one of those fully extended, peak-of-the-floater erasures you think might be goaltending until you drool over the replay a few times and realize everything was above board.
The Pelicans have the wing defenders to make Gilgeous-Alexander work and buckets weren’t flowing as readily as Thunder fans have become accustomed to seeing. But when the game was tied with under 35 secs left in the fourth and the shot clock winding down, he delivered. He got the matchup he wanted, took McCollum off the bounce, made a one-footed fadeaway floater. And-1. Oh, Canada. Thunder win.
“When we do get back to the postseason, we want it to be an arrival. Not an appearance.” —Sam Presti
Presti has been the Thunder GM for the team’s entire existence. He said the above during his 2021 exit interview, the comments coming after a tanktastic season of bummers that saw the team finish 22-50, tied for the fourth-worst record in the league. Those were the days of Jaylen Hoard and Gabriel Deck, Charlie Brown Jr. and Josh Hall. Back then, Sunday night seemed a long way away. Two seasons later, they are hosting a playoff game as the 1-seed. Presti wanted an arrival. He got one. Not sure you can arrive any harder than the top seed in a brutal West.
It feels different this time around. We are more aware of the fragility of these championship windows and understand better that just because a team is young and exciting today does not mean they will be that way in perpetuity. These Thunder are at the beginning of their run—a 1-seed with a high-end talent already in hand, a trove of draft picks, and no albatross contracts. But who knows what will happen tomorrow? Bodies can break, personalities can clash. The future can be unkind to the past. Let’s enjoy the party while we can.
Who let the dogs out? Who let those dogs out? Who let those little mutts go? —Robert Goulet
When the team first moved to Oklahoma City, its original practice facility was near the Nestle Purina Plant, a dog food factory. And on certain days, if the wind came sweeping down the plain, the air would change, and smell like kibble.