They aren’t dragons that need slaying.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder are far too early in their apparent ascendance to greatness to have monsters, real or metaphorical, that need to be wrestled into submission.
But the obstacles lying between them and basketball immortality they’ve been chasing are getting more real all the time.
For now, this elite basketball life is all too new to them. There has been no time to build up the kind of scar tissue that can weigh on a team.
If you were to graph the trajectory of their rebuild, it would more resemble a chairlift than a roller coaster, more straight to the top with all the fun yet to come than neck-snapping heights and lows, twists and turns.
But stumble — and the Denver Nuggets are an obstacle more than capable of rising up and interrupting their march to the Western Conference Finals and beyond — and the weight of failure begins to mount. Few teams don’t have to carry it.
The Thunder haven’t really dealt with it yet.
Three seasons ago, the Thunder were (intentionally) terrible, and Gilgeous-Alexander was a budding star in need of a breakout year. Two seasons ago, the Thunder were a play-in team, just finding their NBA sea legs, and Gilgeous-Alexander earned first-team All-NBA recognition for helping them get that far. They were a fun story.
Last season was their first hiccup, but it was the kind that is so often a prerequisite for teams on their way to championship form: the playoff stumble and early exit. In the Thunder’s case, it was a second-round loss as the No.1 seed to the fourth-seeded Dallas Mavericks. They get a pass for that, but won’t again.
The Thunder regrouped magnificently. They added veteran talent to fill some holes — additional perimeter defence and three-point shooting in Alex Caruso and rim protection and some frontcourt playmaking in Isaiah Hartenstein — on their way to a league-best 68-14 regular season record.
Their 4-0 demolition of the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round did little to dent their status as title favourites.
But that doesn’t mean their path is entirely clear of potential sinkholes.
For instance, the Nuggets, whom the Thunder host Monday night for the first game of their second-round series.
In contrast to the Thunder, the Nuggets present as what happens to teams that are good for a long time: they have their moments of triumph — the 2023 NBA title, obviously — but also plenty of hard miles, playoff heartbreak and internal turmoil that comes with more than a half-decade of operating under the weight of heavy expectations. The Nuggets blew a 20-point lead in Game 7 of the second round last season, blowing their chances at a title defence along with it, and laboured through injuries and frustration for most of this year. They fired their head coach and general manager with three games left in the season.
But somehow, they find ways to win, outlasting the dangerous Los Angeles Clippers in seven games in the first round. That brings them to Oklahoma City, potentially tired, having just finished the Clippers off on Saturday, but unquestionably battle-hardened. The Thunder have been resting their feet for more than a week. Their next playoff test will be their first this post-season.
From a screenplay perspective, the Nuggets are well-equipped to play the part of Thunder’s banana peel and may be overqualified for the role.
A sampling:
• The Nuggets have been to the peak the Thunder aspire to reach, thanks to their magical run to the 2023 title. As well, they have playoff nightmares that are older than this iteration of the Thunder’s post-season dreams. This is the sixth time in seven seasons the Nuggets have made it at least to the second round in the Western Conference. This is the Nuggets' 16th playoff series in that span. This will be just the third series the Thunder have played under head coach Mark Daigneault. When things get ugly, Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon know exactly what needs to be done. The Thunder are still learning.
• There is the MVP debate, to the extent there is one. Last season, Jokic won his third award in four seasons, placing him among the all-time greats, with Gilgeous-Alexander finishing second in the voting. This time around, it’s widely expected that the finish will be reversed with Gilgeous-Alexander joining Steve Nash as the only Canadians to have earned the NBA’s most prestigious individual award, largely on the strength of OKC finishing a whopping 18 games ahead of the 50-win Nuggets during the regular season. And while the voting is concluded before the playoffs start, it will be irresistible in some corners for the series not to serve as a mini referendum on the MVP race.
A big showing by Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder would quiet those who point to Jokic’s epic regular season output — the Serbian star averaged career-bests of 29.6 points, 10.2 assists and 1.8 steals while grabbing 12.7 rebounds a game, fuelling his season-long triple-double with peak Steph Curry levels of efficiency (Jokic’s .663 True Shooting percentage is second only to Curry’s .669 from his second MVP season in 2015-16 among those who averaged 29 points a game or better across 50 games more) — as more deserving of MVP recognition.
Conversely, if Jokic lifts the underdog Nuggets to an upset — or if the Thunder star struggles — it would have the potential to taint an MVP win for Gilgeous-Alexander, even though his league-leading 32.7 points per game along with five rebounds, 6.4 assists, 1.7 steals and a block on .637 True Shooting is a level of production that stands with Michael Jordan at his most dominant. Bottom line is MVPs are supposed to lift teams in the playoffs, and only one of Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic is going to keep playing beyond this series.
• For some local flavour, how about the battle for Canadian basketball bragging rights? Nuggets star Murray hasn’t had the kind of regular-season recognition in his nine years in the NBA that his Olympic teammate has had. Gilgeous-Alexander is a three-time all-star, will shortly be named first-team all-NBA for the third straight season (tying him with two-time MVP Nash), became the first Canadian to win the NBA scoring title this year, and is expected to join Nash as the only other Canadian to be named MVP.
But Murray has playoff cred that Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t have, and he will need to go through Murray and the Nuggets to begin to earn. At least he can count on his long-time Thunder teammate, Montreal’s Lu Dort — a lock to earn all-defence recognition this season — for help. Dort’s presence, along with the rest of OKC’s slew of agile, dogged wind defenders, will be the ultimate test for Murray.
But bet against Murray at your peril. The Kitchener, Ont., star is minted as one of the top post-season performers of his generation. His latest chapter was written when he went off for 43 points, seven assists and three steals on 17-of-26 shooting in a crucial Nuggets win in Game 5 over the Clippers. The pair also traded the Canadian single-game NBA scoring record back and forth during the regular season. Gilgeous-Alexander broke Murray’s record of 50 points set during the 2020-21 season with a 54-point night on January 22nd, adding 52 and 50-point games in the next couple of weeks. Murray answered with a 55-point game, setting a new Canadian record, on Feb. 12th. Murray also has two 50-point playoff games on his resume.
The stakes are far higher starting Monday night. The Thunder and Gilgeous-Alexander are trying to achieve their destiny and finish one of the best NBA seasons in history with the first championship in Thunder history. All they have to do is get through the battle-hardened Nuggets, their perennial MVP candidate Jokic and hope Murray doesn’t achieve the supernova levels he has so many times before in crucial situations.
If or when the Thunder pull the sword from that particular stone, slaying all the dragons lying ahead might seem comparatively easy.
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