OKLAHOMA CITY — No one is more audible than the victor in the loser’s building. The raucous fills the 24-year-old halls of the Paycom Center and reverberates through its creaky corners. Doors of hushed rooms swing open, and the celebration permeates deafening silence. Their hoots and hollers drown Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s explanation of how a title defense fell short.
This is what dethronement sounds like.
When the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs first met in December, 74 wins technically remained on the table for the defending champions. Three losses in 10 days derailed a record-chasing season, but the chase to repeat remained a realistic goal. All things considered, the Thunder still radiated with the glow of a recently minted champion. They buoyed between visiting locker rooms and shootarounds, lengthy road trips and opponent’s best shots.
The difficulty of sustaining greatness hadn’t seeped in. They didn’t yet wear the toll that dominance demands. The challenge of winning, over and over, as rival teams curate counters.
On Saturday, the Thunder lost their crown, dropping Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, 111-103, to the same Spurs that first stained their once-historic-appearing repeat campaign. A 62-win team with an ever-mutating superstar center and a flytrap defense built to contain MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. OKC succumbed to the losses of Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell. The machine stalled at the hands of a worthy adversary.
“It always takes a little bit of luck,” veteran guard Alex Caruso said Saturday night. “We were lucky last year, our team was healthy the whole time outside of (Jalen Williams’) wrist, but he was able to play still. This year, losing those two guys, it changes the dynamic of the team. Obviously, you’re playing a good opponent. You’re playing a 62-win team.”
Nothing about the Thunder’s infrastructure suggests their reign will run short. Repeating, in today’s NBA climate, is onerous and pressurized. The few who have accomplished it know. Just ask Steve Kerr, owner of nine rings, a guard for the ‘90s Chicago Bulls before he was head coach of the 73-9 Golden State Warriors.
“You know that they’re coming to see your team,” Kerr told The Athletic in January. “You want to put on a good show. I know Michael Jordan used to talk about that, and he took a lot of pride in that, and I see the exact same thing in Steph (Curry). Steph knows that people are coming to see him play from far and wide, and they’ve spent a lot of money on tickets. It’s very important for him to give the people a good show, but also to keep winning and competing. That’s what it’s all about.
“The whole league, by the way, is spending all their time trying to figure out how to beat you, building their teams to beat you, building new schemes to beat you. That’s a lot to face year in and year out. And at the same time, it’s like, what an honor that is.”
Oklahoma City’s momentum, after a 24-1 start, summoned critics. Their villanization came quickly.
During the Western Conference semifinals, the Los Angeles Lakers were so disenchanted with the way the Thunder were officiated that they circled the crew at half court. New York’s Mike Brown and Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff vocalized their gripes about the governance of the Thunder’s draining defense and the legislation of Gilgeous-Alexander’s drive-heavy play style. They represented league-wide criticism in OKC’s aesthetic.
The Thunder, and SGA, reveled in it like their juggernaut predecessors.
“We went from the darlings to the villains in a span of a year and a half,” Kerr said of the Warriors. “It’s kind of the nature of sports. When people see something new and fresh, they love it. But, if the same team keeps winning, then everyone wants to see that team knocked off. You feel that.”
OKC felt that at every turn. Disdain felt apparent in their many meetings with San Antonio. Inconspicuous blows against Denver escalated to skirmishes. Their physicality wore on teams.
Injuries proved to be the thorn. OKC incurred the third-most injuries of any team in the NBA during the regular season. More importantly, All-NBAer Jalen Williams was never able to sustain long enough to feel whole.
Williams’ misfortune began last summer, when he trudged through the Thunder’s first title chase despite torn ligaments in his shooting wrist. He knew the risk. Upon returning, he recognized his wrist didn’t feel the way it should. Then on Jan. 17 in Miami, he suffered a right hamstring strain — his first hamstring injury in a series of them. It began a season-long cycle in which he missed weeks then returned, looking the part of an All-Star before being sidelined again.
Two games into this playoff run, a left hamstring strain paused his postseason. He mouthed to the bench, signaling which leg.
After his timely return for Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, Williams half-jokingly told reporters he felt fresh because he hadn’t played all year, just 33 games. After returning for the first couple games of the series, he aggravated the injury. He fought his way to return to the Western Conference finals in Game 6, forgoing his typical return-to-play procedure before realizing he was a shell of himself.
The Thunder, fixated on by rival teams with increasing ammunition, battled the overwhelming feeling that they’d need to get back to the promised land without the versatile forward that dropped 40 points in a finals game.
For much of the season, it wasn’t just Williams. Their injury struggles surpassed the title season, when they endured a weeks-long stretch without any true big man. This season’s ravaging reached further, for guards and wings and virtually anyone of relevance.
Role players rose to the occasion. Mitchell emerged as a standout of a ballhandler; Jaylin Williams solidified his place as a viable backup big; Jared McCain, acquired at the trade deadline, played a remarkable role in the West finals for his quick trigger and fluid handle. Depth couldn’t save them from the myriad of answers the Spurs found.
Kerr, perhaps more than anyone, lived through the turbulence that longtime winning invited. The monotony you must fight, the luck you need to conjure, the adversaries that surface.
“Our third year here was very similar. We had plenty of drama and just the fatigue,” Kerr said. “The mental fatigue, emotional, spiritual fatigue, along with the physical aspect of playing 125 games three years in a row. It’s hard.”
A dynasty can’t live without a foil. A threat to the window of contention, a team that can test these title aspirations. As early as the fall, it became clear that San Antonio was ahead of schedule and prepared to push the Thunder in ways previously unseen.
They rostered an uncommon number of capable ball-handlers in De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper. Guards poised to run offense, unfazed by a defense built on stirring chaos. Behind them, a floor-warping, extra terrestrial center in Victor Wembanyama.
The regular season series was no fluke. OKC felt the table shake in December.
“When they beat us the first time,” tenured forward Kenrich Williams recalled of San Antonio’s emergence as a rival. “That’s pretty much it. They beat us, and it’s a team that you know is going to be very good for a long time.”
The Spurs defense is uniquely built to cast a shadow on a ballhandler as hypnotizing as Gilgeous-Alexander. With Jalen Williams and Mitchell missing, along with Castle in his grill and Wembanyama in his peripheral, SGA played much of the West finals under an umbrella.
“They’re young, talented, well-coached, play the right way, seems like they like each other,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They have the makeup. You don’t beat us without the makeup.”
This clash also brought out perhaps the worst of 7-foot-1 Chet Holmgren. He’s competed against Wembanyama since a teenager, on the triumphant end of their U-19 World Cup bout. In the only matchup that matters for this iteration of the Thunder, Holmgren — thinner, shorter, worse at nearly every attribute, less forceful, less personally invested in their collision than his French counterpart — saw his impact diminished, from All-Star to afterthought.
“I’d say they’re a unique team in terms of personnel, what their personnel do,” Holmgren said Saturday. “I don’t think there’s another team that has the same kind of play style. It’s just different than the normal rhythm of things.”
Kerr, from his Western Conference perch, watched the Spurs prematurely become peers with the Thunder.
“The whole league now is trying to beat (OKC). That means they’re building their teams that way,” Kerr said. “San Antonio, they got young talent, they got Wemby, and they have really good and strong defensive guards. It was like, ‘Oh, s—.’ All of a sudden, they got a rival. I don’t know who the next young team who’s going to be doing that is, but you better believe when all these teams are building their rosters, they got the Thunder in mind, because they know for the next six, eight years the Thunder are going to be at the top of the heap.”
Now the Thunder will move with the Spurs, who boast a core trio aged 22 and younger, in mind. OKC’s summer comes with decisions. Holmgren and Jalen Williams’ extensions activate next season. With the second apron looming — the Thunder are currently projected to be about $39 million above that mark next season — they hold team options on Isaiah Hartenstein ($28.5 million) and Lu Dort ($18.2 million).
Hartenstein helped limit Wembanyama in several games of the West finals, a sturdy center with a necessary presence on the glass and a revered push shot. He’s also SGA’s best screener to date. Dort shot 5 of 25 from deep in the West finals, and his reputation as a defenders doesn’t hide the redundancy on a roster in which Alex Caruso still offers major contributions, and Cason Wallace continuously proves disruptive.
In a summer that’ll nudge the Thunder to practice frugality, they hold picks Nos. 12 and 17 in June’s NBA Draft. Should they need to further shuffle things, tradable contracts are at their disposal: guard Aaron Wiggins, effectively pushed out of the rotation, holds three more years on a deal worth $9 million in annual value and ends in a team option. Isaiah Joe, who saw his minutes chewed into by McCain, has two years left on a deal worth $12 million annually and also holds a team option.
The Thunder will inevitably face change. Their superstar claims he’ll have little sway.
“I will give zero input,” Gilgeous-Alexander said Saturday night. “I will let Sam Presti, the greatest GM ever, do his job.”
OKC’s mettle, built on brutal rebuilding seasons and groomed across these past couple postseasons, did not suffice.
As long as Wembanyama continues to mutate, San Antonio will stick. Experience no longer separates these youthful heavyweights. The Spurs tagged them first, but others will attempt to follow. The Thunder, as powerful as they remain, won’t be the target to chase this summer — even if they feel they’re deserving of this trip to the NBA Finals.
“There’s nothing that needs to be solved,” Caruso said. “We could have won the game tonight, and you would have been asking them the same thing. I don’t think there’s this narrative that this is a bugaboo. We should have played better and won the game and been in the NBA Finals. They’re a good team, they’re young. We’re a good team, we’re young. Both will probably be around for a while, so we gotta get better and try to win next time.”
The threshold for superiority has shape-shifted throughout NBA history. Bill Russell set an unreasonable bar. Michael Jordan, after Magic Johnson and Larry Bird combined for eight titles, received his coronation for winning six in six tries. Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan settled on five each. LeBron James and Curry recalibrated expectations at four. No superstar born from this era claims more than one.
Adam Silver’s parity era prides itself on equal opportunity. The Thunder sniffed their shot as the first team to return to consecutive finals since Kerr’s Warriors.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s rulebook for winning leaves little room for runners-up.
“You have to win multiple times. Winning is the ultimate form of (dominance),” Gilgeous-Alexander told The Athletic on May 11. “You have to do it multiple times. The more you win, the more dominant you become. I guess that’s how I see it. Eras do differentiate, so it’s hard to compare eras. That’s where it gets tricky, rankings and stuff like that. But winning makes you dominant, and there’s no middle ground with that. Whatever era it is, whoever won the most in that era was the most dominant.”
On the night his Thunder completed the sweep, a second-straight, against James’ Lakers, the follow-up felt obvious. Are the Thunder dominant?
“Nah,” he said. “We’ve only won one.”
For now, it’ll stay that way. It’ll be at least a year before Gilgeous-Alexander’s next chance to weigh in on this era’s definition of dominance.
