I lived all over Oklahoma City during the first Thunder boom years and as a cultural force, the team was completely inescapable come playoff time. Foot traffic downtown ticked up. Tickets became a social currency, not just an entertainment commodity. A fresh mural of a star player would reliably go up in whatever neighborhood was trendiest.
And then Kevin Durant left in free agency which initiated a four-year period of first-round playoff exits followed by a complete roster teardown and a couple of years of stinky ball before the Thunder became a force in the league again.
If it wasn’t clear already (one of the NBA’s most astute analysts, Zach Lowe, picked them to win the title at the beginning of the season), the Thunder emerged as the clear championship frontrunners this week. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won league MVP after the team put away a formidable but flawed Denver Nuggets team in a series that went to seven games but probably shouldn’t have.
The Thunder won an eye-popping 68 games this season, but we had no guarantee that the way that they won—freakishly tryhard, high-effort defense paired with a good but not incredible modern offense that Gilgeous-Alexander takes over in crunch time—would get the job done in the playoffs, when everybody dials up their effort. And yet, Coach Mark Daigneault has continued to rely on 12 different players for quality minutes when other teams’ rotations shrink to just eight or nine guys.
Now the Thunder are up two games up on an inexperienced Minnesota Timberwolves team with two just-as-inexperienced teams from the league’s wimpier Eastern Conference waiting on the horizon. It’s OKC’s title to lose.
Looking beyond this season, the Thunder are loaded with quality young players and future draft assets, thanks to a series of GM Sam Presti’s big, smart bets all hitting at the right time. His trade for Gilgeous-Alexander may go down as the best of this, or any era.
Meanwhile, the stars of the last era of the NBA (LeBron James, Durant, Steph Curry) are aging out of relevance, and the last three champions suffered catastrophic injuries (Celtics), self-sabotage (Bucks) or cheap ownership unwilling to spend on better players (Nuggets). The future of the NBA, whose appeal is international, could belong to our humble, westward neighbors in Oklahoma City.
Tulsa News
- Billie Eilish announces two shows at BOK Center
- After years of “will they, won’t they,” OKPOP says it’s 82% of the way to its funding goal
- FarmBar, Country Bird Bakery and OKC’s Nonesuch collab on a one-night-only dinner June 4
- Airport opens exhibit opportunity to artists, but artists have to pay for the exposure
- Broken Arrow named 12th best place to live in the country by U.S. News & World Report
- New restaurants Ava June and Doctor Kustom Bistro to both open May 27
- Owner of Utica Square wants out
State & Regional News
- Affiliated Tribes of Oklahoma join to sue federal government over horrific Indian boarding school practices
- U.S. Supreme Court blocks creation of taxpayer-funded religious charter school in Oklahoma
- 30-year special education teacher grills Ryan Walters upon arrival to state school board as state legislators dismiss Walters’ calls for zero income and property taxes as unserious
- Get a load of this enormous fried onion burger
- Ari Fife at The Frontier goes in-depth on that bill Gov. Stitt vetoed that would’ve made it easier to get funds for investigating cases involving missing and murdered Indigenous people
- McNellie’s Group wants to open two restaurants in OKC this year
- Trump admin cancels DOJ investigation into OKC PD that began in 2022
Jobs & Opportunities
- Artists Creative Fund applications are open until June 16
- Bama is hiring for a Director of Engineering | Full-time | Salary not listed
- Oklahoma Birth Equity Initiative is hiring a Creative Marketing Coordinator | Full-time | Salary listed at $48,000-$52,000
- Take Control Initiative is hiring a Legislative & Policy Analyst | Full-time | Salary not listed
- TMA Systems is hiring an HR Generalist | Full-time | Salary not listed
- Osage Casino is hiring a Marketing Services Supervisor | Full-time | Salary not listed
