I. Brand-New Tank
During the second half of the 2020-21 NBA season, I wrote a weekly column called Tank Diaries for this here website. It had become clear that my beloved Oklahoma City Thunder were trying to tank that season; they just weren’t very good at being bad. They had a little too much talent and far too many hard-playing guys to bottom out properly. With every win, the odds for a high draft pick got worse. So did my blood pressure, my eyes, my mind. Oklahoma City was not then, is not now, and will not ever be a free agent destination. And it’s a rarity that you can trade for someone great enough to be the best guy on a championship team.
The only reasonable way for a team like the Thunder to go about getting premium talent was by tanking hard, losing as much as possible, and giving themselves the best chance at the top pick. Through pain comes pleasure. This was how the organization built its first title contender, stacking loss on top of loss on their way to Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden. OKC’s front office had already shown an eye for talent, especially when it came to the top of the draft. Why not run that plan back?
And so they tanked. OKC won 22 games in 2020-21. They had the worst offense in the league, the worst net rating. Abysmal basketball, full of failure. There were brick walls more fun to watch. It was the fewest wins in Thunder history, narrowly beating out the 23 they won in their first season in Bricktown. My Tank Diaries were self-indulgent and maudlin, packed with bullshit and fun to write. There were 14 entries total. One was about an exploding ostrich. One was about how Kenrich Williams rules. Let me take that again. One was about how NBA champion Kenrich Williams rules. Another was about how Mark Tatum is a sadist who will smile in your darkest hour. In every edition, I made a pilgrimage to POKULAND, a psychedelic Eden of sensuous delights that burned down in February 2024. One day, we will rebuild. We will rebuild and love again.
The last entry went up after the 2021 draft. Before the order was announced, OKC had had a chance to leave the lottery with two top-five picks. Instead, it wound up picking sixth. A real donkey kick to the chest after months of prayer for Cade Cunningham. It made the entire enterprise feel damn near not worth it—the writing, the hoping, the tanking, all of it. Eventually, the Thunder drafted Josh Giddey, a 19-year-old Australian with a penchant for passing and tucking his hair behind his ears. Giddey is now the starting point guard for your Chicago Bulls, and Alex Caruso might have a statue in OKC by the end of this sentence. But the sculptures come later. First, the past.
II. Treasures and Gravy
In the four seasons since, the Thunder have taken a ride on the NBA elevator. From the basement to the roof. The 2021-22 squad upped their win total by two, won a whopping 24 games. It was still ugly, thank God. It was another season of hoping for losses and hunting for promise. When your team is tanking, you are on a constant hunt for positive flashes from young players. You can’t stop asking questions, making claims. Some are rational, some cuckoo. Is SGA good enough to be the no. 1 option on a championship team? Obviously Théo Maledon will be in the league for at least 15 years. Once Giddey gets a jumper he’s gonna be a problem. Is Mike Muscala the greatest shooter alive? Tre Mann has a top-10 stepback in the league. Hey, this Wiggins kid can play.
The lottery treated the Thunder better that year. They drafted Chet Holmgren at 2, Jalen Williams at 12, and Jaylin Williams at 34. Holmgren came out of summer league floating. He had shown the breadth of his skill, how rangy he was, how different. Then he went to play in a Pro-Am in Seattle, hurt himself contesting a LeBron layup in transition, and forced the entire state of Oklahoma to learn about Jacques Lisfranc de Saint Martin.
The 2022-23 season hadn’t even started yet, but Chet’s was over. Jalen Williams showed flashes of his own during the Utah and Vegas summer leagues. He was smooth, played with touch, arms like patio heaters. It did not take long to realize he would be part of the team’s future—not someone who could score 40 in the Finals necessarily, but a great complement to Shai and Chet on the wing. The team went 40-42 that season, finished 10th in the West, and wound up in the play-in. They beat the Pelicans in the 9-10 game, then lost to the Wolves with a chance to make the playoffs. But what a leap. From 24 wins to 40, without the help of the only top-five pick on the roster. The tank had borne fruit.
The 2023-24 Thunder pressed fast-forward on their trajectory and ended the season 57-25, the best record in the West. Even the most delusional Thunder fans did not see that coming. After beating New Orleans to open the playoffs, they went up against Luka Doncic and Dallas in the second round. The Mavericks dispatched OKC in six, the Thunder’s young pups in Holmgren and J-Dub not quite up to snuff that go-round. Still, it was a gravy season, ultimately. Lumps taken, lessons learned. It felt alien to go from tankers to the top seed in a deep West, like trying to remember a language you haven’t spoken in decades.
It is tempting and true to say that the Thunder are now getting sized up for rings because of what they did after last year’s playoff loss. The players already on the roster kept their heads down and kept getting better. Williams’s offensive game got more diverse and his defense went up about 10 levels. Chet came back wiry and scrappier, with a little more off the dribble and a little quicker release on his 3s. He also used the offseason to grow his third and fourth arms, at least that’s how it looked sometimes. Meanwhile, the front office acknowledged the roster holes and filled them. Thunder architect and jazzman Sam Presti traded Giddey for human Mario star Caruso and then went out and signed Isaiah Hartenstein to the biggest free agent contract in franchise history. Without those moves or that internal development, Oklahoma City is not the 2025 NBA champion.
But it’s also true that the Thunder created a system, a way of being, during those tank years that ran through the entire rebuild and still sustains them. They cultivated resiliency and kept their eyes on the far-off treasure. This is a credit to Presti. It’s also a credit to Thunder head man Mark Daigneault, the rare coach who can not only develop players but also get them to play hard, play together, and get downright Masterlockian on the defensive end. The habits that win titles are forged in practice, in games, in workouts. In the dark days of constant loss, it requires players to focus and work to get better every day. It requires doing things other players won’t. This is how you get the MVP willing to set screens to free others, how you get Lu Dort grabbing three offensive rebounds in a Game 7, how Aaron Wiggins makes five triples in Game 2 after playing only nine minutes in Game 1. The work you do when you’re on the bottom will reward you if you make it matter.
III. Johan Petro, Le Centre Ville
The first shot in Thunder history was on October 29, 2008, a clanked 17-footer from above the left elbow from Johan Petro. It was rebounded by Richard Jefferson, one-third of the ESPN/ABC booth that just called the first Finals win in OKC history. That 2008 game was Jefferson’s second with the Bucks during his only season in Milwaukee. The Nets had traded him to Cream City in the offseason for Yi Jianlian and Bobby Simmons. Time is a saw.
Before all that, during the starting lineups, the Thunder PA guy introduced every player on that inaugural team, ran down the entire roster. They announced the inactive dudes in suits, the entire bench, and the starters. The two guys who got the biggest pop during pregame intros were Durant and Desmond Mason, both for obvious reasons. In Durant’s case: golden boy, generational talent, Big Monday legend. As for Mason, the 17th pick in the 2000 NBA draft was an Oklahoma State basketball luminary. Mason scored the 10th and 11th points in Thunder history, a fadeaway over Malik Allen. Years later, he would be seen on Season 3 of Below Deck Mediterranean, one of the guests on the yacht. His first appearance came in an episode called “Panic at the Deck-O,” a perfect episode title, the bar all other episode titles will try and fail to reach. Fun to think about 2018 Soderbergh coming home from set after a long (breezy?) day of shooting High Flying Bird, firing up some BD, and seeing Mason on his television.
The first and second points in Thunder history were scored by Earl Watson, a straight-line drive from the right wing for a layup off the glass. He blew by Luke Ridnour (Thunder legend) to do his damage. The third and fourth points in Thunder history were scored by Jeff Green (Thunder legend), who knocked down a couple free throws after getting fouled by Charles “Tweets” Villanueva. The fifth point in Thunder history was scored by Nick Collison (Thor himself), a free throw he took after Andrew Bogut fouled him on a layup. This was the same possession where Collison grabbed the first rebound in Thunder history, an offensive board. Chris(t) Wilcox scored the eighth and ninth points in Thunder history. The former Maryland Terrapin hit a face-up jumper over Bogut along the right baseline and his headband looked holy and without blemish.
The leading scorer for the Thunder that night was their bouncy backup point guard, an erratic stick of dynamite out of UCLA they’d taken fourth in that year’s draft. His name was Kyle Weaver—no I’m just playing, I’m talking about Russ. The first point Westbrook ever scored was the 19th point in Thunder history, a free throw after a drive into the lane. It was one of a team-high 13 he scored that night.
It wasn’t until the third quarter that Durant finally got on the board. The man with God’s jumper went 0-4 from the field in the first half. He was getting ripped clean by Michael Redd, rough stuff. Durant’s first bucket in Oklahoma City came on a pin-down the first possession of the second half. Collison set a screen just outside the left block, Durant curled into the lane, and Green found him. The eighth leading scorer in NBA history wet a contested jumper from just inside the free throw line. It was a shot the league would come to know well and pretty as ever. The defender had no chance. The man contesting? Richard Jefferson. The circle will be unbroken. By and by, Dort, by and by.
IV. Bedrock
Gilgeous-Alexander, Dort, and Kenrich Williams are the only three Thunder players who have been around the entire rebuild. They’re also the three players Daigneault name-checked in his interview with Scott Van Pelt after Game 7 on Sunday.
“[Shai] was kind of the first guy in the door. Him, Dort, and Kenrich Williams deserve a lot of credit for this because as great as the team is, and as much as we’ve layered great players on top of them, our confidence comes from Shai, our fearlessness comes from Dort, and Kenrich Williams is an unsung guy but he’s like the soul of the team.”
Dort arrived undrafted out of Arizona State in 2019. SGA arrived in a trade you already know about. Williams was a throw-in as part of the trade that sent Steven Adams (Thunder legend) to the Pelicans. All he has done since then is bust his ass and be ready when his name is called.
There is a consistency to Gilgeous-Alexander, a consistency to Dort, a consistency to Williams. They took the losses and did not lose sight of the goal. Games were lost, but the culture stayed about making the effort plays that would win games in the future. Those three players are the bedrock of a foundation built to weather the ups and downs of a game, a series, a season, the tripod that enabled the Thunder to never stray too far from their identity. OKC is a team that requires your full focus, your full lungs, your full hearts. They have a guy who can go shot for shot with anyone in the league and a defense that overwhelms.
More to the point, the effort is at full blast every play. Not several times a quarter, every second. The ball’s in play? Then it’s hell for leather. It does not matter what happened last time down the floor. They move on. The before is gone. It is only now. And right now, the Thunder would like you to stop what you’re doing and give them the ball. They would like to bury you, and turn Paycom into a graveyard of broken teams. Offenses leave bewildered, looking at their hands, wondering why they couldn’t hold on to the most important thing on the court. Against the Thunder, come correct or be welcomed to the catacombs.
V. On Foolish Devotion
The Bucks would go on to defeat the Thunder 98-87 in that very first game. I was in the building and don’t remember it seeming that close. I can’t recall much from that night, honestly. I remember I went with my friends Eman, Heath, and Heath’s dad, Tim. I remember I wore an Oklahoma City Hornets shirt. Think it was Reebok? I remember wanting Robert Swift to get in the game. I remember I thought about buying a Wilcox jersey. I remember Earl Watson shooting too much.
Watching those Thunder teams in the days before they became serious contenders—with Westbrook, Durant, Harden, and Serge Ibaka wild-eyed and bouncing off walls—it was like watching a bull calf grow. First, it’s all wobbly legs and wet behind the ears. They fall just walking. And then nature takes over and the beast gets stronger, scarier, more volatile. The losses helped that Thunder team find itself, same way they helped this current iteration do the same.
I remember heading into the Oklahoma night after that loss all those years ago and feeling thrilled at the unknown, punch drunk off possibility. My head was full of strange, wild futures. Not that OKC would be in the Finals in three years, or that they’d win a title in 16. There was nothing specific, just an abstract ripple of feeling. I remember thinking this was the beginning of something. And maybe it would be ugly, maybe it would be beautiful, maybe it would be weird beyond all reason, but professional basketball was in Oklahoma. I remember thinking, “I am a fan of this team now.” Yes, the color scheme is essentially “Knicks” and the logo puts me to sleep and Bison would’ve been a cooler name, but this is my team and I’m just going to have to put up with all that. That’s what fans do.
Rooting for any team is an act of foolish devotion, a choice to get into a relationship that will always bring more frustration than joy. But the joy is so full, so warm. It’s a dragon worth chasing. That’s why you deal with the cellar seasons, because the views from the top are so good. The view sustains you. It’s too pretty not to.
