Oklahoma City is one game from what would be a massive upset, seeing as how Golden State won a record 73 games to the Thunder’s 55, but then we stop and think. Didn’t the same Thunder just topple San Antonio, which won 67 and tied for the seventh-best regular season ever?
And then we ask: Should we be surprised that a team with two of the league’s five best players is doing all this upsetting? Isn’t the NBA a superstar’s league?
A year ago, the share-the-wealth Hawks — who won 60 regular-season games and were the East’s No. 1 seed — reached the conference finals, where they were swept by Cleveland, which was without Kevin Love the entire series and Kyrie Irving for half of it, but still had LeBron James. There were those (like yours truly) who believed those Hawks could flout the got-to-have-a-superstar conventional wisdom. They wound up underscoring it.
In the Thunder, we see a team that’s essentially everything the Hawks weren’t/aren’t: Driven by two surpassing talents, augmented by a big and fast and young supporting cast, not completely wedded to the 3-point shot. We cannot fault the Hawks for failing to land Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook. (Durant went one pick ahead of Al Horford in 2007; Westbrook went No. 4 overall in 2008, when the Hawks had no pick.) We do, however, note the difference one draft slot can make.
Horford: Four-time All-Star.
Durant: Seven-time All-Star; four-time scoring champ; 2014 MVP.
The Thunder haven’t had the smoothest ascent. After crashing the 2012 NBA finals, they traded James Harden, their third-best player. They won 60 games the next season, but saw Westbrook lost to injury and were ousted in the Western semis. They then won 59 and lost in the conference finals. With Durant hurt for most of last season, they missed the playoffs, prompting the firing of Scott Brooks and the hiring of Billy Donovan, whose NBA coaching experience constituted 2 1/2 days with the Magic before returning to the Florida Gators.
Not three weeks ago, it was possible to view the Thunder as the great team that never was; as the overthinking organization that shattered its core by trading the 23-year-old Harden and was now poised to lose Durant to free agency. OKC was beaten by 32 points by the Spurs in Game 1 and would trail the series 2-1. Then the Thunder got rolling, making San Antonio look old and slow. They’ve done something similar to the Warriors, who are neither old nor slow, but who lost Games 3 and 4 — their first consecutive losses of the season — by an aggregate 52 points.
It’s still possible Golden State could right itself, but what’s stunning about these playoffs isn’t so much the fall of the Warriors — remember, the Spurs got the same treatment — as this clap of Thunder, the lessons of which are clear. If you have a superstar, you always have a chance. If you have two superstars, you need only complementary parts.
Serge Ibaka made his reputation as a defender before learning to score. Steven Adams was drafted in Round 1 with a pick landed in the Harden trade. Enes Kanter is a big man deemed inessential by the Jazz. Cleveland dumped Dion Waiters because he shot too much. Andre Roberson is considered a defensive stopper. Those are five unassuming guys — until you put them alongside Durant and Westbrook. Then they can be made to look like real players.
As mentioned, the Thunder are big — Adams is 7-foot, Kanter 6-11 and Ibaka 6-10; Roberson is a 6-7 wing — and quick enough to have wrecked Golden State, which won the title last year by benching center Andrew Bogut, at its small-ball game. According to ESPN Stats & Information, a lineup of Westbrook-Waiters-Roberson-Durant-Ibaka has outscored the Warriors 91-35 over the past two games. (Then again, with Durant — listed at 6-9 but closer to 6-11 — you never really “go small.”)
As we survey the Hawks, we note yet again their lack of size: Their forwards are Paul Millsap, who’s 6-8, and Kent Bazemore, who’s 6-5. Jeff Teague, who’ll turn 28 this summer, is the Hawks’ second-youngest starter; he’d be OKC’s oldest. The Hawks are a skilled team, but not an especially gifted one. (Dennis Schroder is the exception. He’s a big-time talent.) Of the Thunder’s top seven, all were first-round picks, four going in the lottery. Of the Hawks’ top seven, four were first-rounders, only Horford in the lottery.
If the Hawks choose to keep Horford, they’ll have spent big without acquiring the requisite superstar. If they don’t keep him, would they be half as enticing to, say, a Durant, who’ll be wooed by every club? As is, they seemed doomed to swim against the current, to being good but never good enough. And we look at Durant and Westbook, whom the Hawks couldn’t have drafted, and we think, for the hundred thousandth time: What if, in 2005, they’d taken Chris Paul?
