Oklahoma City sits atop the Western Conference with a week remaining until the trade deadline. You would hardly think that a team playing at the top of its conference and seemingly one of the three teams unanimously believed to be in the running for a championship needs to make a move.
Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and James Harden give Scott Brooks and Sam Presti an extremely young core to work with and build around for the foreseeable future. This Thunder team is in prime position to become the next NBA dynasty.
They just have to win that first title first. Last year, showed all the promise this Thunder team had when they made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals. But the weaknesses, that at times have cropped up in this year’s campaign, appeared too. This is a Thunder team that lacks any low post threat and can struggle in the half court as it relies mostly on Kevin Druant and Russell Westbrook to break their man off the dribble and create for themselves or others.
When Oklahoma City is not running, the team is struggling to score. Unless Durant gets on some uncontrollable scoring run, which tends to happen.
So now that the Thunder are seemingly at a championship’s doorstep, you cannot blame everyone for getting a little greedy and thinking about how to further improve this team.
After all, this is the team that shrewdly traded Jeff Green to Boston for Kendrick Perkins at the deadline to shore up the interior defense and bring a championship veteran into the locker room.
Would Presti have something else up his sleeve? Something, well, big?
No. It appears he would not.
“We still look at ourselves as a team that’s evolving,” Presti told Shaun Powell of NBA.com. “A lot of our growth has come internally and in the continued development of our players. We continue to try to study the things that are driving our success while looking at options that could make us better. We know internally that we have a long way to go to get to the place we want to be.”
Powell’s column linked above suggests the Thunder and the Bulls should be pushing hard to bring in Dwight Howard and dare him to leave a clear championship contender in the summer when he becomes a free agent (or have him opt in and give the team a full season before becoming a free agent like Chris Paul plans to do with the Clippers).
As tantalizing as that might sound, Presti appears to have little interest in pursuing that kind of a deal. Instead, he seems content in continuing to build internally.
That has been the path the Thunder have forged since selecting Durant with the second overall pick in 2007 and trading away Ray Allen. It was a slow building process, but the results are hard to argue with. Oklahoma City is in position to win a championship for the foreseeable future.
Is this team perfect? No. Has it reached the full maturity to win a championship? That has yet to be seen.
What this shortened season has shown thus far is that Oklahoma City will be in position to make a return trip to the Western Conference Finals and maybe break through and get into the Finals. It is a team that still has weaknesses, but one that will still be incredibly difficult to beat four times in seven games.
The answer to whether the Thunder need to begin thinking about making some changes or add that last piece will not be determined until after this season’s postseason plays out.
Until then, Oklahoma City certainly seems to be building in the absolute right way. Nothing needs to be changed right now.
