Pat Beverly cost them a ring by taking out russ knee. And kd getting injured cost them one too.
They were so close alot of times, just missing that extra little bit. I think if presti built the roster around them more appropriately they would've had 2 rings together by now.
I mean look how shyt that team was when kd left and westbrook pulled off the carry job of a lifetime just to get them to 6th seed.
That team wasn't constructed around kd or westbrook correctly. Kd has said as much "it was just me and russ" like he had Noone else to rely on but him and russ. Having a couple good role players is essential to getting championships
Just from a mentality stand point
For me personally anytime we get into conversations about team building and mentalities of guys I feel like it feeds into racist shyt especially considering the situation that a team was stolen from Seattle put into the center of OKLAHOMA with black guys not from around there not even over the age of 24. Them white people in the front office were liberals and they had enough thought to put a buffer between those young guys and the media but still all the failure got put on KD. Like KD was forced into a kind of respectability politics in OKC from things like having his tattoos in places that the jersey covered. The fashion choices to make him not appear threatening to the whites in the market. So once he left and was able to be him it was a shock to some but that’s the game. Them OKC fans probably said so much racist shyt to other players but then probably yelled to Russ and KD y’all different. Presti was able to skate on that. That’s a big reason why nobody wanted to go there if you look who they added.
They should’ve fired Scott Brooks years earlier and fired Presti. Andre didn’t deserve that contract. Adams ain’t deserve that contract.
It’s a bad look that some of the worse players in the franchise then are productive now in different places like Kanter that hoe. That season Dipo had post OKC he looked like a All-star.
At the end of it historically once a team got past a certain level they never regressed until it was the end of their chapter and that’s how OKC looked to me plus it gets worse the more you think about it from the league gifting them top picks and the thick headedness of the front office that they got because a lot of them worked with the Spurs (Pop being a bytch is a story for another day think of the type of Black players he goes for)
Russ was being a bytch ass nikka after KD left especially considering he should’ve known better than anyone else.
To me for a players to cement themselves as best of the best they got to repeat so since 1980 you got Magic, Kareem, Zeke,Jordan, Hakeem, Shaq, Kobe, Bron, KD, and Steph. When you look at it some mix of this should be in your top five. (Steph goes in because of him being him but KD winning those two Finals MVPs and wiping the tears from Curry’s face on national TV proved who really was king) KD gets hate because he never failed and told you what he wanted and people clowned and laughed at him. Man came back from the Jones foot like Jordan and the Achilles like Kobe And they don’t even mention that