#with literally nothing but 1 singular playoff round to show for it

[wmnylander]

looking at the leafs fanbase & realising that most people have never watched a team sport before becoming a leafs fan and finally realising that’s why people act the way they do.

[eliottweetsill]

The Daily 30th: Oklahoma City Thunder

Mood: Waking up with a surprisingly manageable hangover after an epic night of partying, and ultimately deciding they regret nothing.

Best thing going: Paul George and Russell Westbrook will be on their team this year

Best player: Russell Westbrook

Worst player: Doug McDermott

1-year core: Paul George, Russell Westbrook, Steven Adams

5-year core: Hopefully all of the same people?

Not to dampen the much-justified excitement, but the Thunder acquiring Paul George shows us all just how wide the gap is in the NBA between the NBA and the Warriors. The Thunder just added a top 10 player in the league to a roster that has the reigning MVP and won 47 games last year. They should win maybe even 10 more this season. Still, they may be 10 games off the Warriors’ pace. That is a lot of games! For Oklahoma City, the organizational infrastructure remains thin. George and Westbrook are a very intriguing duo with an enormous ceiling. Even so, their third best player is Steven Adams. Adams is great, he’s a fine center and a great competitor. He’s no Klay Thompson or Kevin Love, however. The minimum star count for contending teams these days seems to be three. Having said that, you’d much rather be Oklahoma City than, say, Minnesota. Or would you? (Now I’m really dampening things.) Minnesota will have Butler, Wiggins, and Towns for a few years together. George and Westbrook have one shot in Oklahoma City, and could both bolt for Los Angeles next summer to play with Lonzo Ball, Julius Randle, and Brandon Ingram.

So what, then, is the goal for Oklahoma City this season? Is it to compete for a championship or to keep Westbrook and George? If you lose in Game 7 of the conference finals and George and Westbrook bounce, was it a failed season? If you lose in round one, but they both stay, is that better? If you lose in round two and keep only Westbrook, is that really promising anything more than future early-round exits? Are future early-round exits all you’re asking for? It’s really difficult for any NBA franchise to justify taking things day-by-day when six days every July alter the entire league landscape every single year. Compound this fact with the lone constants in recent years: the dominance of the Warriors, and that of LeBron, and it’s really hard to see why anyone would go for it in a given year rather than stock the pantry full of draft picks and young prospects. How many first rounders could Presti turn George and Westbrook into right now? 4? 5? Deal them into a doomed situation and reap the rewards a la Danny Ainge. But doesn’t that take away the whole fucking point of basketball? Basketball’s not a stock market game. It’s a competitive game of chance with a ball and a hoop. Westbrook and George are a very good pair of basketball players, and having those good players in their primes should excite fans more than having selections that could turn into players as good as Westbrook and George already are.

What is the point of the NBA? Is it just to win championships? Ideally, yeah. A mere 96.666% of individuals affiliated with organizations fall short of this goal every year. Only one team can win the championship. So, is that top 3.33% a do-or-die proposition? Well, it shouldn’t be. There has to be some level of acceptance of failure, otherwise a league like this will make you miserable, especially if you don’t root for Golden State. My theory is this: I want to feel like my team can win a championship if they play their best and get lucky along the way. I want to feel justifiably sad when they lose, and like I’m not crazy for thinking they’ll win. If I can enter a playoff series thinking, “We can do this if we get it right,” I’m satisfied. That chance brings the game to life. As a Bulls fan, I don’t look back at 2011 as a failure. The Bulls got to the conference finals and got spanked, but they won Game 1 by 20 points and Taj Gibson dunked Dwyane Wade through the floor. That was awesome. I felt like we could win. 2013, when all we had was Joakim Noah and Nate G.D. Robinson, we beat the Heat in Game 1and felt invincible. We almost took a 3-1 lead in 2015. Those years felt awesome, even though some part of me likely knew LeBron James was going to beat us in all three of those seasons. The Thunder felt that thrill every year it had Durant and Westbrook together and healthy. That amounted to five seasons over seven years (after Westbrook’s rookie season). So with George in for Durant, and Westbrook’s game having blossomed to its maximum potential, you’d think they’d be right back at that level of feeling like they have a chance.

So why doesn’t it feel like they have a chance?

Paul George is not as good as Kevin Durant. When the Thunder had Kevin Durant, they were not as good as the Warriors. The Warriors now have Kevin Durant. So, a worse Thunder team faces a better Warriors team, how can we expect the Thunder to have a chance? Let’s dip into some optimistic takes on why these Thunder could succeed where those Thunder failed.

• Were the Warriors better with Durant? In the postseason, they lost one game. But, they didn’t have Durant’s Thunder to take them to 7 games, or an injury to Steph Curry to sink them a couple notches in the early rounds, and it’s possible that the Cavs efforts were quashed by a lack of edge, a diminished bench unit, and an uncertainty of identity beyond LeBron and Kyrie. The Warriors could be better with Durant, but their improvement upon adding Durant isn’t near OKC’s improvement on adding George, I’d argue.

• Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry have both had many injuries throughout their career, and if one of them falls, Golden State will leave the door open; someone has to be ready to walk through.

• Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook never really played with each other so much as they played around each other. Durant shot, Russell shot, they ran breaks together and threw alley-oops, but their styles were never especially complementary.

• George is not as valuable as Durant, but he’s also just a different player. He’s more of a defensive standout, and on offense he is more of a physical inside threat, which can make his off-ball abilities more valuable when paired with Westbrook than someone like Durant, who at times functioned merely as an excellent shooter (a tall Kyle Korver) when Westbrook had control.

• George can still carry the offense whenever needed, but this is definitely Westbrook’s team. The Thunder never tried being Westbrook’s team when Durant was healthy.

• If Westbrook can hold onto the Sith energy inside him that propelled him to an MVP season, that may be an intangible that the Thunder can use.

• The pieces surrounding Westbrook and George aren’t quite as good as Serge Ibaka and Dion Waiters, but players like Patrick Patterson and Doug McDermott may provide enough shooting to prove more effective, again, in a complementary sense.

• There’s always more that can be done. The Thunder do have some tradable pieces if it seems that they’re one piece away. Enes Kanter and a first for DeMarcus Cousins is available if New Orleans is looking to tank.

So I would advise Oklahoma City fans to take a counterintuitive measure: Just take it one day at a time. Don’t worry about next year. Don’t worry about Westbrook and George’s next contract. Worry about making use of this one. The thing that can make you most want to stay in a job is if you’re very caught up in the day-to-day of it. When players have massive, years-long clouds hanging over their pending free agency, they tend to find it easier to leave because there’s already been so much consideration that they would do so. When all you’re worried about is the next day’s work, you don’t have time to think where you’ll be next year, and starting over somewhere else seems more difficult. With the Warriors in control, it’s hard for any NBA team to think they’re really building toward a championship right now, and players are more likely to fantasize about where they could go. If you can achieve singular focus on a specific goal, you stay together. There’s also the fact that Paul George and Russell Westbrook don’t have well-defined relationship, and who knows where it’ll go as they play together? Maybe they’ll fall in love. Literally. And get married.

The Thunder project as a top four team in a loaded Western Conference. Russell Westbrook would like nothing more than to go toe-to-toe with Durant’s Warriors in a playoff series, and if there is a God, we’ll get the chance to see that at least once. George being in the picture makes it feasible that the Thunder don’t get swept in four blowouts. If Russell Westbrook has a chance against Kevin Durant, that brings them back into same essential paradigm they were in with Durant — having a shot. It will never feel as pre-destined as it did with Durant, and it will never feel as organic. It will never feel the way that would have felt. But reality isn’t some fairy tale where the hero comes back home and wins one for his kingdom (unless you’re LeBron James, I guess). Reality takes twists and turns you can’t control. Reality is being Oklahoma City means you aren’t going to lure free agents; you have to grow them or sell commodities to obtain them. As much as Durant seemed to define Oklahoma City, George is also part of OKC’s young history. Allowing the team not to fall into prolonged mediocrity or perennial lottery status is critical for Oklahoma City’s brand. If Oklahoma City becomes known as a bottom-tier NBA franchise, it’ll be tough for them to get off the mat.

As much as George does for the Thunder, he raises their baseline, which actually tilts focus to the bit players. Can Andre Roberson’s shooting improve? Can Doug McDermott become consistent? Can Patrick Patterson excel in a renewed role? Can Enes Kanter and Steven Adams round out their games to become more than window-dressing on their respective weak ends of the floor? Will Nick Collison ever die? Can any of Semaj Christon, Josh Huestis, Alex Abrines, Jerami Grant, and Terrance Ferguson become legitimate contributors? The Thunder have long struggled to cultivate a productive bench, and it could be what ultimately drags them down this year.

The thing to think about isn’t next season where Westbrook and George may be gone. It’s not the playoffs where anything can happen but usually doesn’t. It’s the first game of the regular season, taking the court with the reigning MVP, and Paul George in an Oklahoma City uniform, and beating the crap out of that first opponent, whoever it is, and re-establishing the Thunder as an NBA power. The rest comes later.