Oklahoma City Thunder

Oklahoma City Thunder

Oklahoma City Thunder was initially based in Seattle, and the name of the franchise was the SuperSonics. Under this name, they won a championship back in 1979, the only one in franchise history. After 41 seasons played in Seattle, the team was sold by its owners and then moved to Oklahoma City to play in the Chesapeake Energy Arena. Since they moved, the management picked three future MVPs of the league, in Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. In the early stages of their career, those three showed that they have the potential to do some damage in the league by beating strong teams at that moment, including Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics. Not many years later, they managed to get to the NBA Finals, after getting past Dallas Mavericks, who were the reigning champions at that time, Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs. Unfortunately for them, after they won in Game 1 of the Finals, Durant and his buddies didn’t show signs of improvements and they ended up losing in only five games. Going into the next season, they couldn’t resign James Harden, so they traded him to the Houston Rockets, losing a very important piece of the team. Now it was the Durant-Westbrook era in Oklahoma, and Kevin won the MVP award in 2013, but couldn’t get past the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals that year. The Thunder was always a top5 team in the Western Conference, but despite that, they couldn’t manage to get to the ultimate contest anymore, and after they lost again in the Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors in seven game, Kevin Durant chose to leave and join nobody else but… the Warriors, right after he lost to them in 2016. This move came as a shock for the entire NBA community, and Russell Westbrook was not very happy with the decision, but he chose to resign a long-term deal with the franchise. A year after, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony came to help Russ, but they ended up being eliminated by Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. Anthony left in that summer, but George decided to stay, even if a lot of people around the league thought that he will go to Los Angeles.

Andrei Dilean

info@brainbasketball.com