The Oklahoma City Thunder entered the NBA playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and have title aspirations.
The Thunder currently have the best odds on BetMGM to win it all, which is prompting many to ask if this is the best Oklahoma City team in franchise history. While there is certainly a case to be made for that, there is one thing that’s certain:
While this could be the first OKC team to win a title, it won’t be the first team in the franchise’s history to do so.
As the Thunder, the team has appeared in one NBA Finals (2012) and four Western Conference finals (2011, ’12, ’14 and ’16).
This era of OKC basketball was defined at first by the team’s three emerging superstars: Kevin Durant, James Harden and Russell Westbrook.
The franchise drafted Durant No. 1 in 2007, before adding Westbrook in ’08 and Harden in ’09. All three would go on to win an NBA MVP award. By ’12, all three were receiving MVP votes despite being in the early stages of their careers.
Oklahoma City finished the 2011–12 season with a 47–19 record (remember, this season was shortened due to a labor stoppage and play began on Christmas day), which was the second-highest win total in the league. Durant became the first player since Michael Jordan to win three-straight scoring titles and Harden was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year.
The Thunder entered the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference before completing a sweep of the Dallas Mavericks in the first round and a gentleman’s sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the second. The Western Conference finals was a matchup with the No. 1 seed San Antonio Spurs, who OKC took care of in six games.
On July 12, 2012 the Thunder defeated LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in game one of the NBA Finals. They wouldn’t win another game, as Miami won four-straight to win the first of back-to-back championships.
A few months later, the Thunder would trade Harden to the Houston Rockets after the two sides were unable to agree to a contract extension. With Durant and Westbrook serving as a two-headed monster, the Thunder made it back to the conference finals in 2014 and ’16, but came up short on both occasions.
Durant would leave for the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 offseason and win his first NBA championship the following season. Westbrook would remain in OKC and win the NBA MVP award.
The Thunder haven’t advanced beyond the second round since. However, before their move to Oklahoma City, the franchise was the Seattle Supersonics, it does have one championship to its name.
In June 1979, things weren’t necessarily great in Seattle. President Jimmy Carter was still attempting to get a handle on raging inflation and the city was in the midst of recovering from the horrendous wave of Boeing layoffs earlier in the decade, where more than 50,000 lost their jobs in a 24-month span.
Everyone still vividly remembered the “Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights” billboard from 1971.
But by the summer, the city of Seattle was finally celebrating something: an NBA championship.
The Seattle SuperSonics, a franchise that had known more futility (the team had just four winning seasons entering the 1978–79 campaign) than fortune in its first 12 years in the NBA, had climbed all the way to the top of professional basketball, defeating the Washington Bullets in five games to win the city’s first—and still only—NBA title.
The roster wasn’t a ragtag group buoyed by a superstar, either. Rather, it was a connected group of players who knew each other like brothers. Dennis Johnson was a bulldog defensively, Jack Sikma held court down low, Gus Willams had blink-and-you’ll-miss-him speed and savvy veteran Fred Brown kept the offense in a flow state. Seven different Seattle players averaged 10+ points per game, with none hitting the 20 points per game mark. It was an extremely balanced team.
The year prior, the Supersonics suffered the ultimate heartbreak to those same Bullets. Seattle and Washington met in the 1978 NBA Finals, but the Bullets pulled out the win in the decisive game seven. The Sonics attempted to claw back via fourth-quarter comeback, but fell just short.
The 1979 finals were a different story. The Sonics didn’t just win, they dominated. Seattle dropped game one before winning four-straight to win it all.
More than 300,000 people surrounded the team on its parade route.
|
Year |
Result |
|---|---|
|
2009 |
No Playoff Appearance |
|
2010 |
First Round Loss |
|
2011 |
Conference Finals Loss |
|
2012 |
NBA Finals Loss |
|
2013 |
Second Round Loss |
|
2014 |
Conference Finals Loss |
|
2015 |
No Playoff Appearance |
|
2016 |
Conference Finals Loss |
|
2017 |
First Round Loss |
|
2018 |
First Round Loss |
|
2019 |
First Round Loss |
|
2020 |
First Round Loss |
|
2021 |
No Playoff Appearance |
|
2022 |
No Playoff Appearance |
|
2023 |
No Playoff Appearance |
|
2024 |
Second Round Loss |
