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Watching the Oklahoma City Thunder, Beginning and Ending

The consensus on the Thunder is that their window is either closing or all the way closed. To watch them, though, is to see a team that's a long way from finished.
Photo by Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

The Oklahoma City Thunder should have been bored by now. If the pattern established in the early part of this decade had held, the Thunder would be not so much a navigator of this NBA season, but instead a juggernaut, a 60-wins-no-question, wake-me-up-in-April beatdown machine. They would have followed one of the quicker and cheerier ascents in basketball history with an enduring prime; they were supposed to be somewhere in the middle of that prime right now. By this point, maybe, they'd have a title, or at least another Finals appearance. Maybe Scott Brooks would have a coaching job.

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That giddy motif of the early 2010s has lately acquired some splotches. The 2014 push ended with a Serge Ibaka injury and a Western Conference Semifinal loss to the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs. Kevin Durant missed 55 games last season due to complications from a broken foot, and although Russell Westbrook spent the year playing like an anvil attached to the end of a bungee cord—it's an abstract compliment, but please remember literally any five-minute selection from Westbrook's campaign—the Thunder missed the playoffs for the first time in six seasons.

Read More: Watching The Boston Celtics, A Pretty Good Basketball Team

Those disappointments precipitated the usual shake-up, but they also had a kind of telescoping effect. Issues that had long seemed part of a distant horizon, namely Durant's impending free-agency, all at once became very present. Billy Donovan replaced Scott Brooks, but more to the point, what once appeared to be a dynasty in the offing suddenly appeared to be more than halfway through coming apart.

One of the most captivating young teams in recent memory may soon dissolve, and this is not good. The former perma-harbingers of basketball's future have suddenly become older; they now count missed opportunities instead of looking forward to limitless ones to come. There is one pleasing outcome of the new stress surrounding the Oklahoma City organization, though. The Thunder are still one of the league's best teams, still entirely capable of winning a title, still home to two of the most sublime athletes in any sport—and they now play with a nightly desperation, a sense of time getting short, more befitting an eight-seed hopeful.

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Hard pass. — Photo by David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Midway through the fourth quarter of a mid-December game against the Utah Jazz, the Thunder trailed by ten. They had won four straight entering the game, but that evening they encountered the same difficulties that had led to a 3-3 start. Donovan's sets looked uncomfortably like Brooks' old ones, all stock pick-and-rolls giving way to overdetermined isolation as the shot clock dwindled. Either Durant or Westbrook was too often reduced to an observer, or a tertiary option stashed in the corner. Utah's young gummy-armers mucked up Oklahoma City's offense and ran comparatively fluid actions themselves on the other end.

Then the Thunder turned it on. Durant curled around a screen at the key, Westbrook darted a pass to him, and he tossed in a jumper. Steven Adams rolled down the lane like some mean mustachioed golem, snaring a pass and banking in a layup. Down three with less than a minute remaining, Durant threw a crosscourt pass to Serge Ibaka, who made a corner triple; down two again a few seconds later, Durant skipped past his defender and dunked to force overtime.

Oklahoma City's blend of youth and talent has always made them a ready subject for amateur psychoanalysis. This evening, they looked polite and overly deferential—their second-most common offensive mode, the first being a level of individual grace (Durant) and tenacity (Westbrook) that renders concerns about system irrelevant—until deficit and game clock left little room for politeness. It was as if they were waiting for the moment when they had no choice, when the concerns of the game overtook those of new coaches and final years of contracts and potential last chances.

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Buoyed by this change in temperament, the Thunder sailed through overtime. The game turned from a test to a recital. Durant was deft and nimble from the wing; Westbrook tore down the middle of the court, flinging himself at the rim or stopping and rising at the elbow. Oklahoma City ended up scoring 25 of the game's final 35 points and turning a bad night into a good one. It all happened quite naturally.

Slender people also flex. — Photo by Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

For the rest of the NBA's contending teams, this game might have been a piece of encouraging fortune—welcome proof that they can wriggle themselves out of a tight corner and nothing more. For Oklahoma City, it resonated in more complicated ways. It's tough not to wonder which sentiments prevailed, privately, in the locker room. Were they glad that their pair of dynamos could patch together a late and improbable victory, as they have so many times, or were they troubled that such patching was needed? Did the thrill of the late sprint make up for the inability, during the greater portion of the game, to find a comfortable cruising speed?

The week that followed the overtime win against Utah was an entirely normal one for a contending team—blowout wins over the Trail Blazers and Lakers, a close loss on the road in Cleveland, a close Durant-powered win in Los Angeles against the Clippers. The Thunder, though, have lost the luxury of normal weeks. There is only the ticking clock, and the strange mix of familiarity and newness. Durant crosses over, drains a three, and wonders if his new coach lacks the flaws of his old one. Westbrook becomes a blur, sees Durant standing still somewhere far away from the rim, and remembers when he didn't have to consider the political implications of kicking it out or not. A title is still possible for this team, and so is a first-round loss.

The preferred metaphors for the regular season, among players and coaches, all tend to invoke the journey. It is a long and changing thing that rewards patience, trust, and a maintained but not necessarily punishing persistence. In Oklahoma City this year, they conceive of it differently. It's not a marathon, it's a sprint. The Thunder play, each night, with the stress of someone defusing a bomb during a job interview. The players go hard, and Donovan sweats nervously. It may not be healthy, and it is certainly not ideal, but it is never dull. It's not finished, either.