How does this OKC Thunder squad compare to the first 50-win team? Kevin Durant weighs in
He’s wiser now than he was then.
When Kevin Durant first won the hearts of Oklahomans, then the face of an early, 27-win year-to-year turnaround, he was a mere 21-year-old. Fresh-faced, quick-footed, a sensation yet to be truly witnessed.
All Durant and the young Thunder had then was the buzz they’d garnered behind a youthful, promising flip of a regular season outlook. No playoff experience. No credentials in a series with legends, just the unfolding of their own.
Durant’s NBA career — full of marvel and myth, underlined by what feels like so many jersey swaps that they’ve started to come with green-screen backdrops — has lasted long enough to see history repeat itself.
In his return to OKC on Friday, Durant came bearing gray hairs and the same adoration for basketball that once left locals obsessed with him. A basketball purist and a man who’s seen every NBA picture possible, Durant recognized what he saw across from him when he took the Paycom Center floor. Not a perfect reflection, but a near reincarnation.
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Three young stars, though on this night only two actively played. A team that leaped from missing last year’s play-in tournament to contending for a rigorous West’s first seed. A team with the wins and runs and stardom to put the league in a chokehold. A team too good, too soon — so much so that it’s left outsiders questioning how much their lack of postseason experience might matter.
“We never really listened to the noise,” Durant said of his old Thunder squads. “It wasn’t as easy to hear what fans and media was saying back then. It’s easier to hear all that (expletive) now. We didn’t even really think about if we was ready or not, we just went out there and played, played with intensity. I think that makes up for a lot of stuff. That’s what (this Thunder team) does.”
Durant still remembers the point of the Thunder’s arrival. When its once premature hopes materialized. Early in the 2009-10 season, when OKC pushed the eventual repeat-champion Lakers to six games, the Thunder hovered just above .500. Starting in January 2010, it rattled off nine straight wins.
In that time, Durant recalls a sense of belonging. Not unlike this Thunder squad, which at times has recognized teams playing it differently from recent seasons. Durant’s Thunder eventually got a regular-season win over the Lakers after dropping the first three meetings that season.
“Once we knew we could stack up against them in some way, we felt confidence, then the rest of the league — we just cruised from there,” Durant said.
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Being one of the league’s youngest teams was bound to leave viewers checking the Thunder’s ID with relative success. But to be simultaneously this young and this talented, it’s left spectators grasping at experience.
OKC has its first option, a consistent scorer and MVP candidate. It has its promising rim protector. It has another rising two-way stud. It has shooters. An identity. It's fast, aggressive. Its coach has bandaged every incision thus far, minus the tradeoffs it swallows.
The one thing it can’t mask is sufficient postseason data. Durant didn’t consider it then. Perhaps the Thunder shouldn’t now.
“We wasn’t thinking about nothing but just being good teammates and playing the game. ... That’s what all the good teams do," Durant said. "Just focus on the people that’s in the building. We didn’t even think about who we was playing, how young we were, we just was out there hooping. When you look back on it, we had that type of tunnel vision. We was able to just block out all the (expletive) and just play.”
The Thunder of Durant’s day saw their coming-out party crashed early. But they didn’t exactly mirror the current roster’s expectations. Each of their turnarounds came seemingly with the snap of a finger, with each entrusted to similar levels of youth. But OKC has spent time as the first seed this season, firmly in position for it for even longer.
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Perhaps an early Thunder demise this postseason wouldn’t be as heartwarming for some as it was when Durant's young squad withstood L.A.'s wrath. The clouds of external expectations, evoked by the possible No. 1 seed's startling emergence, will loom.
Perhaps OKC will be too deep into the playoffs, too focused on a run that it'll be without the time to be worried about experience or the blemishes that come with maturation. That alternate will probably see the Thunder play freely, running and jumping with the same boyish verve that’ll have gotten it there.
"It's just basketball,” Durant said. “At the end of the day, we do this (expletive) every day. There’s more at stake in the playoffs, more people watching, criticizing, and praising you. But at the end of the day, it's hoop. We practice hoop every day.
“So I think the young teams that keep it at basketball, and not worry about the lights and what that time means to everybody else and just keep it at hoops, those are the ones that succeed. I think (this Thunder team) is locked in and just focusing on the game, so they'll be fine."
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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How does this OKC Thunder squad compare to the first 50-win team?
