Thunder’s thrilling nerd juggernaut ushers in NBA’s nice guy era | Oklahoma City Thunder
THe was supposed to be the boring final, a competition between two small town teams with any of the media from Boston or New York or even Denver, with the (allegedly) the most overrated goalkeeper of the NBA, no personality, tirelessly, and a Canadian MVP whose ancestry seemed to indicate nothing to indicate the terminal decline of America as a stable of Elite Basketball. Instead, we were entitled to the most exciting and unpredictable finals since LeBron James succeeded in 2016 – a lively and punishing exhibition of seven physical basketball games whose outcome was really clear until the last quarter of the season. Denigated and dismissed by a basketball commentariat which has spent a large part of this season ruining the modern NBA charisma shortage, Oklahoma City and Indiana played as if they were bitten by laughter, launching from the two ends of the court with a kind of mad symphonic intensity.
If the finals of recent years aimed to punctuate a dynasty (Golden State in 2022), to let Nikola Jokić be Nikola Jokić (Denver in 2023), and to master a technocratic synthesis of all the elements of the modern game (the Celtics last season), it was a victory built on victories, flops, distance. It was sometimes deaf, but it was all the more beautiful for his despair of rotation. At the end of all, the team with the best record of the regular season and the best player in the league appeared victorious. In the years to come, this line of statistics can give an inevitability of inevitability during the season. But Oklahoma City’s victory in Sunday evening decision -maker – like these finals and the playoffs in general – was anything but predictable. Even after the star goalkeeper Tyrese Haliburton, who played during the final with a veal strain, left the court with a torn Achilles at the end of the first quarter, the Pacers did not give up.
As the triumphant players of the Thunder arrived on the trophy podium, they seemed so much drained by their accomplishment that they did not behave. With an average age of 25.6, they are the youngest NBA champions in almost half a century – and at the time of the peak, it is fair to say that their inexperience finally showed. “It’s your time guys, celebrate”, the presenter Lisa Salter encouraged them as the television formalities concludes. Draved in confetti, SGA, J Dub and the rest did nothing, swinging around the Larry O’Brien trophy as trainees during their first summer networking event which awkwardly turns the buffet. Never has a team of NBA champion reprimanded its cultural criticisms on the field while confirming the fundamental accuracy of their criticism.
With their love for group interviews, the incessant positivity and their unhappy penchant for barking, this vintage from Oklahoma City Thunder often looks more like an in Caprella troop than a basketball team, a band of Harlem Globetrotters hairdressing shop ready for harmonization and good collective faces. Head coach Mark Daigneault likes to describe them as a “rare” team – but what can be the rarest about them is how great they are. In a world of professional trolls, all-priest in red and a constant concern for the state of young men today, there is something vaguely refreshing in a group of young gay guys who are doing with the kind and well-high aspect of a heritage management professional who spoke to you through reallocation options for your 401K. It also helps, of course, that they are very good in basketball – and these finals have offered a superb fully common demonstration of their versatility through the boards.
Shai Gilgeous -Alexander is, of course, the supernova, a player so richly accomplished – and syllabic – that at the age of 26, he has already gained the law, like MJ, CP3 and KD before him, to be known by his initials. SGA achieved 15 performances of 30 points throughout this playground race, a total exceeded in a single qualifiers by Michael Jordan in 1992 and Hakeem Olajuwon in 1995. After the match on Sunday evening, he is also the first player in 25 years to win the MVP title of the regular season, the final MVP Gong and the title of the season. Not since Shaquille O’Neal moved around the field in shorts large enough to dress a King bed that there was a player like dominant in all the main categories of awards in a single season.
The ascent of SGA is all the more improbable since we consider its relative sweetness of three points, which is – at least the last decade would make us think – the road to glory in the NBA of today. Where others large of modern game dominate by the power, speed or precision, the great skill of SGA is the variation: variation of rhythm in painting, variation of the angles of shooting which he creates for himself, variation of the heights of which he explodes his game of deadly mid-range. He is also comfortable unleashing an inch from the ground which he backs up to gain an elevation on an isolated marker, and with the elasticity of the ankle of Prime Gaël Monfils, his joints allow him to transform even the most improbable looks into routine buckets. The bizarre and frankly slightly frightening vision of the calves of Gilgeous-Alexander operating at 45 degrees on his feet has become a constant of these finals; At other times, he showed his unusual comfort with a game played at the waist, returned to himself, the headband showing like a set of wood, moving forward with a hyper-extended leg then snapping to derive another actually effectively effectively effective rider.
He is a player so rich in mobility, so tirelessly and inventively productive, that he is almost annoying to catalog his routes to the basket. An incredible sequence in a critical section of the fourth quarter of match 5, just when the Pacers threatened another crazy return, saw Gilgeous-Alexander stealing the ball on a Andrew Nembhard collar, as a vacuum cleaner on the field, to assess two defenders, to get rid of them, to hang on to be the glass, then to prolong his left arm. Poison at one end and caviar to another: it is the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander guarantee, the recipe that allows it to cook so fiercely each time it works on the ground.
Each member of the Thunder support distribution gives their own gifts to the party: Chet Holmgren, the “unicorn” large that the Thunder caught with the second choice of global recovery in 2022, offers protection by making the edge much more robust than the physique similar to the rope suggests; Jalen Williams, at 24, showed signs that he could equal or even one day go beyond the prodigious SGA offensive statistics; Alex Caruso plays the old hand (he is 31 years old, but it is positively old according to the standards of this team), soothing children or blocking the shelves of the opposition as required by the opportunity; Lu sleeps, a four -finged Florentine steak of a man, has the name of a villain from the 1980s action film and The Brawn to Match. For all the individuality of these weapons, however, it is a team built in the image of SGA, all stretches and common. Relentless movement, exchanges of position, defense exerted as an offensive weapon, an offense which flows in a transparent way in defense, members who look like a liquid … If I had not already opted for an aquatic metaphor, it would be tempting to describe this as a basketball Cappella – but even, the imagery does not work completely, because the Tondertolitia Rigidity of the fixed harmonic sheet, because the mowing divisions. No one in this team never holds the same line; The bass, tenors and countertenors all merge, sharing the music of the other. When a gilgeous is deposited, an Alexander appears; You could pass Jalen Williams, but then you have to face Jaylin Williams.
Thirteen years ago, the Thunder reached the final with their magic trio of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. Reconstruction since this quasi -champion team broke was long, and at various times – especially three years ago, when Oklahoma City finished the regular season with only 24 victories – it seemed that all this could happen to nothing. Now, the reward for the patience of the managing director Sam Presti is a young team of champions who are good at that to finally break the parity cycle of the NBA of the NBA. This Thunder list seems likely to remain intact during the next seasons – and who, legitimately, will approach their second ring? The hopes of the Celtics of another title to be completed depend on last year on the Achille of Jayson Tatum; The Nuggets led by Jokić watch some players short from a list of champion; Ants are not ready; The Lakers took prime Luka but an aging LeBron, plus an imminent property change to face. Maybe the most rigid Thunder challengers next year will have been those they have just faced.
A word therefore for the falls. In their insufficiency, their commitment and their lack of ego, this Indiana team looks nothing like their winner last night. While they gathered their historic race in the final – the first franchise in 25 years – they took the anne of a Destiny team, a set for whom no deficit was too big and no time to reverse it too small. For a brief moment last night, while the leader 6 feet 1 at TJ McConnell, asked to intervene in place of the injured Haliburton, exploded Holmgren on several occasions, a man at a foot of his superior, and spoke of a chain of sampling of the glass to date. Instead, the Thunder gradually reaffirmed control, Holmgren rediscovered the gift of its wing duration, and at the start of the last quarter, fans of the Paycc Center set out the celebrations.
In the coming years, the decisive image of the night – and this season – is perhaps not Gilgeous -Aalexander accepting the MVP price of the finals with a hectic smile, or Caruso who pumped the crowd when the victory was almost assured. Instead, it will be a Haliburton struck to beat the court in distress towards the end of the first quarter when he understood that his Achilles, as his participation in the title decision maker, were made. The release of the Pacers star, which started these playoffs, with the most surfed player’s label in the NBA and finished them largely as the most clutch player that basketball has seen from Kobe Bryant, stole the spectacle of its tension, whatever the value of resistance to Pacers without Tyrese, resistance to the link. But their miraculous race in the final will not be forgotten soon: the Thunder may have had the most complete season, but no team of this year’s NBA produced better neighborhoods than Indiana. Haliburton will be back, perhaps even before the end of next season – and the Pacers will be agitated to complete the last stage of the trip started with the final of the eastern conference last season and this year’s advance to the big dance.
Polished, young, attentive and barking to barking in the field, these two teams seem ready to define professional basketball for the next decade. The NBA has officially entered its time of nice guys – and if it produces more seizure positions as absorbing as this year, all the grunts on the lack of personalities and boastful league, all the Agita on the end of fresh and American basketball MVPS and Anthony Edwards being the only hope of sport, we imagine, we imagine it quickly in history.
