Everyone agrees that the Oklahoma City Thunder are very, very good this year. Their participation in the NBA Finals, on top of carrying an 80-18 combined record into that matchup, leaves little room for debate. They’ll have a chance to finish off a tremendous run by taking down either the New York Knicks or Indiana Pacers yet apparently people are making the claim already that Oklahoma City is an all-time great team, Finals result not in hand.
Michael Wilbon doesn’t really agree with that and offered his blueprint for how a team achieves such a status during his appearance on First Take on Thursday morning.
“You’ve got to have a championship, and maybe you have to have two,” Wilbon said.
Wilbon recalled the ascent made by Kobe Bryant’s Lakers and Michael Jordan’s Bulls and how it took reaching the top of the mountain multiple times to answer all lingering questions.
Which seems very reasonable. No one should be handing out the subjective “all-time great” moniker to teams who haven’t lifted a trophy, even if it seems at times like a foregone conclusion.
Now, the other side of that argument would be that the Thunder are in position to put up one of the top-10 winning percentage seasons across the regular and postseason in NBA history. And that they have an amazing collection of talent that plays together like puppets on the same string.
Thankfully, in a few weeks or less we can have a more definitive answer on whether they belong in such conversations of if some pundits got out over their skis.
