‘We have to earn our arrival’: What comes next in OKC’s title run

THE RAFTERS IN the Paycom Center in downtown Oklahoma City are a little sparse. The hometown Thunder have collected a handful of division titles and there’s that prized 2012 Western Conference finals win commemorated up there, but the old Seattle SuperSonics championship history was left behind during the relocation 16 years ago and the reborn franchise is still working on its own.

That made Tuesday night a special opportunity, a young Thunder team trying to establish itself had a chance at raising another one by winning the NBA Cup in Las Vegas. It didn’t happen. The Thunder had their worst offensive night of the season at an inconvenient time and the Milwaukee Bucks got the hardware, the bonus money and the right to raise a pennant in their rafters with a 16-point win.

The result is emblematic of the Thunder’s ongoing battle to win some respect, something they don’t demand almost as a team rule. But it’s something they are very much trying to earn, living through the ups and downs of the process along the way.

For more than 15 years, dating back to a hype video with the cheerleaders and mascot that used to open their local broadcasts in their first seasons in Oklahoma, the Thunder have used the same rallying cry.

#ThunderUp.

It’s a perfectly fine and useful little slogan but, like anything born in the 2000s, it could use some updating. The current version of the Thunder has probably earned a different one. Perhaps a phrase their coach, Mark Daigneault, unwittingly branded them with during their NBA Cup run would be more appropriate.

Two weeks ago, with point differential becoming a factor in the Thunder’s final group play game and facing a possible tiebreaker situation to ensure advancing, Daigneault put his starters on the bench to start the fourth quarter because he had a 20-point lead over the Utah Jazz. He refused to run up the score.

“You got the angel and devil on your shoulder,” Daigneault explained. “But we’re going with the angel.”

#GoingWithTheAngel. It doesn’t sound all that menacing but, well, it’s how the Thunder actually roll.

“There’s a certain grace you win with,” Daigneault, the reigning NBA Coach of the Year, said.

#WinningWithGrace? That one is not going to set T-shirt sales records, either, but the Thunder often do win with grace.

Last season they were one of the best stories of the NBA, surpassing any and all expectations with a 57-win campaign that stunningly earned them the No. 1 seed in what was a historically competitive Western Conference.

Now more than a quarter of the way into this season, they once again have the West’s best record (20-5). It’s driven by the league’s No. 1 defense, which they own by a relative mile, and the best net rating, which they own by a relative mile too.

They remain ESPN BET’s favorite to win the West, a position they’ve held since the summer, and ESPN also ranked them No. 1 in its recent Future Power Rankings, which projects all 30 franchises’ outlook over the next three seasons.

In short, the Thunder are loaded. But because of their low-key nature as a team, including their head coach and superstar, and their small market, they aren’t always regarded or treated as such. And it shows in the data and the schedule.

TWO HOT-BUTTON topics around the Thunder that underscore this are the foul calls they get (or don’t) and their off day on Dec. 25. Ten teams were selected to play on Christmas, the annual five-game showcase of the best, brightest and most popular. The Thunder were left off.

“I don’t think it’s a personal issue because we’ve played on Christmas nine times,” Thunder president Sam Presti said after the schedule was revealed. “We have to earn it … we’ve got to go out there and show them we’re capable.”

Presti, who has run the team since 2007, is known for his culture-setting. As a franchise tenet, the Thunder preach humility, seem to actively avoid attention, and by league standards don’t talk that much trash.

“We’re a young team and a lot of times in the league you have to earn your stripes, you really don’t get given anything,” said guard Alex Caruso. “For us, it isn’t about how loud you are. It’s about getting the job done.”

But about those fouls. After a mid-November game against the Phoenix Suns, Daigneault sat at the postgame lectern and, with little prompting, unloaded a torrent of advanced statistics. He listed the number of drives per game his team makes, their foul rate and where they rank in the league and the percentage of time OKC spends in the bonus compared to their opponents.

The lengthy but polite diatribe was an attempt to prove how the Thunder, in their opinion, are underrepresented at the foul line. And, in his own way, Daigneault had had enough.

They’d won by 16 points that night but the Suns had taken 22 more free throws and Daigneault wanted to use the moment to outline the discrepancy.

Such pleas, or rants, are somewhat common across the league. Just that week, the NBA handed out four fines for players’ and coaches’ actions directed at referee calls … but none to Daigneault. Why? Because, well, he’d simply stated facts and done so without venom.

This isn’t surprising. Since Daigneault became Thunder coach in 2020 no member of the Thunder has been fined for complaining about officials. In that span, the league has issued more than 60 fines for words or actions protesting officiating. It certainly isn’t rare.

“I thought the final play was the ref blowing a call!” steamed Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers the day after Daigneault’s controlled burn. Rivers was frustrated after a controversial loss to the Charlotte Hornets and earned himself a $25,000 fine.

In the history of the Thunder organization, dating to their relocation from Seattle in 2008, team records show only three league fines for reacting to referees. In the next game after Daigneault’s “rant,” against the Dallas Mavericks, the trend continued. The Thunder took 11 fewer free throws than the Mavs.

“If I’m going to address the officials, which I don’t do very often … then I’m going to make sure that I have credibility and integrity,” Daigneault said. “If I address officiating in the future, it’ll be fact-based.”

Still, officiating is a nuanced, often subjective topic that, naturally, sometimes drives the coach a little crazy. But not too crazy, mind you. Now in his fifth season as coach, Daigneault has been called for fewer than 10 technical fouls. So far this year, he’s tied for 14th among coaches with one.

But while there may be a discussion to be had about how the Thunder are officiated, on one hand, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is third in the NBA in free throws per game with eight. On the other, the Thunder lead the NBA in drives per game as a team, with just under 60, and yet rank 29th in free throws per game.

On this matter, if he’s choosing between the angel and devil, Gilgeous-Alexander goes with the former.

“There’s so many things going on out there, the last thing I’m worried about is whether I’m going to get a call,” Gilgeous-Alexander said earlier this season. “If I feel like I get fouled, I’ll let them know in a nice way. Hopefully they can appreciate that and look out for it on the next play.”

Gilgeous-Alexander, by the way, has no technical fouls this season. He has three technical fouls since joining the Thunder in 2019.

On defense, the Thunder challenge almost every pass and shot and rank No. 1 in steals per game and No. 4 in blocks per game — an aggressive, physical style that lends itself to fouls. But Jalen Williams is an established 20-points-per-game scorer, drives an average of 12 times per game, and gets, on average, about one foul call on drives per game. Williams has been called for one technical this year.

As a team the Thunder have been called for just four technical fouls all season. During Diagneault’s tenure, the Thunder’s records show they have been called for a total of 44 unsportsmanlike technical fouls. The next closest team in that span, since 2020, is the San Antonio Spurs with more than 60. The LA Clippers are third with more than 100.

That’s some #Grace right there.

The Houston Rockets, at the other end of the spectrum, have been called for a league-high 24 technicals this season. Not to draw conclusions and considering all the necessary nuances, the Rockets are fifth in the league in free throws per game.

Though it must be said the Thunder took seven more free throws than the Rockets in the NBA Cup semifinals last Saturday. And in the Final on Tuesday against the Bucks, they were hit with a whopping three technical fouls, though the game doesn’t count in the NBA stats database and technically won’t blemish their long-standing history of good behavior.

“[The referees] did a good job,” Daigneault said after the game. “We didn’t lose because of the refs.”

PRESTI CONSTRUCTED THIS powerhouse roster in an efficient three-year rebuild. It’s plain to see the type of players he likes: His draft picks and trade targets are generally long-armed, defense-first and multi-positional. But there’s also a character type as well.

Before coming to the franchise in 2007, Presti was raised in the San Antonio Spurs environment, where Hall of Fame coach and president Gregg Popovich preferred acquiring players who had a sense of humor, enjoyed long team-building dinners and who have “gotten over themselves.”

The players Presti has stocked this team with largely share in all those traits. Gilgeous-Alexander dresses to kill and was the MVP runner-up last season, but clearly shares his personality with teammates like the soft-spoken but hugely valuable Williams, and big man Chet Holmgren, who plays with a high level of competitiveness but often shies away from talking about himself.

Famously, the Thunder do postgame TV interviews in a group, to both share the credit and to protect each other from perhaps any edgy, immediate postgame comments.

The effect of all that in the modern NBA, where attention is currency, is that for the time being, the Thunder will likely remain at or near the top of the standings but perhaps not always be treated as such.

Which is where their real motto should come from. “There’s no silver platters in Oklahoma,” Presti said. “We, as an organization and team, have to earn our arrival.”

#NoSilverPlatters has a ring to it.