When Oklahoma City guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander spoke to ESPN for an on-court interview after the Thunder’s Game 1 win in the Western Conference finals, several of his teammates gathered around him in support.
It’s a practice unique to Oklahoma City’s roster, which has been employing the all-for-one interview strategy for a couple of seasons. And it’s a practice that has been criticized by their peers, such as Golden State Warriors forward and four-time champion Draymond Green.
“There’s a certain seriousness that it takes to win in this league,” Green said on his podcast in October. “And there’s a certain fear you have to instill in teams in order to win. I just don’t know if they’re instilling fear in teams with all the bromance and stuff after the game.”
Whether or not teams are scared of the Thunder hasn’t seemed to matter much yet. After a 114-88 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday, Oklahoma City now stands only three wins away from the NBA Finals.
And the postgame “bromance” is just one symbol of the team’s youth and togetherness, two qualities that helped make the Thunder the league’s best team during the regular season.
“We’re very unique in the way we all get along,” All-Star forward Jalen Williams told NBC News earlier this season. “And I think that’s what shows up on the court. When you have 15 guys that all believe in each other and all want each other to do well, it allows you to go out there and play very free.”
The Thunder played free to the tune of 68 wins before the playoffs, the best regular season winning percentage since the 2016 Warriors won 73 games. The Thunder were fueled by a stingy defense, posting a defensive rating of 106.6, the second-best mark this decade. (So far in the postseason, that defense has gotten even stingier, with Oklahoma City posting the best defensive efficiency of any playoff team since 2016 with a minimum of 10 games played.)
The Thunder are doing all of this their own way.
Conventional wisdom in the NBA is veteran-laden teams typically do best come playoff time. The Timberwolves and the New York Knicks, two of the other conference finalists, have rosters with average experience in the top half of the NBA.
Oklahoma City, meanwhile, entered the season with the lowest average age and least experience of any roster.
The leader is Gilgeous-Alexander, 26, who on Wednesday was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. He averaged 32.7 points, 5.0 rebounds and 6.4 assists during his MVP campaign.
In addition to SGA, key players include Williams and big man Chet Holmgren, the second overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft. Veteran guard Alex Caruso is another important figure, clocking in at an ancient 31 years old.
The whole group is tight-knit, celebrating one another’s success.
Take, for example, forward Kenrich Williams, who hardly played in each of OKC’s first two postseason series except for mop-up duty. He played 10 minutes off the bench in Tuesday’s game, making all three shot attempts, including two 3-pointers. When he was on the floor, the Thunder outscored the Timberwolves by 19 points, a performance coach Mark Daigneault lauded as a “huge energy boost.”
The roster was built slowly but surely by executive Sam Presti, who had to deal with the departures of previous MVP winners Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in the 2010s before he could turn the franchise back into a contender, mostly through the draft and shrewd trades.
Since it hired Daigneault 2020, Oklahoma City has increased its win total every year, from 22 to 24 to 40 to 57 last season. During that time, Presti added players such as Williams, Holmgren, Caruso, center Isaiah Hartenstein and guard Cason Wallace to a core that already included Gilgeous-Alexander and perimeter defender Lu Dort.
The franchise had to endure some lean years at the start of the decade, but now the young group is peaking all at once.
“Maybe from the outside, a lot of people probably think it’s a surprise,” Williams said of the team’s success. “But internally, everybody on our staff and organization see how hard everybody works on a daily basis. So it’s kind of one of those things that it’s more like timing than it would be anything else.”
And as the team continues to enjoy success, Daigneault encourages his players to be true to who they are, even if they don’t act the way others expect them to.
“I’m certainly not their age, I’m not nearly as cool as they are, and trying to be wouldn’t land well,” Daigneault told NBC News earlier this season about coaching the NBA’s youngest roster. “So I just try to be myself. I try to give them permission to be themselves. And we all work together.
“Everybody’s different, everybody’s from different backgrounds, from different families, but our paths are all colliding together right now, and we’re trying to make the most of that.”
The post They are the youngest, most inexperienced team in the NBA — and on the cusp of the NBA Finals appeared first on NBC News.
