Kurtenbach: Are the Thunder the next Warriors? Don’t bet on it

The NBA Finals start between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers on Thursday, and it’s a series that matters to the Warriors of the past and future.

In fact, the series hasn’t even started, and the Warriors are already in the crosshairs.

Well before Game 1, ESPN already compared the Thunder to the last NBA dynasty — the Warriors. The similarities, ESPN’s Zach Kram wrote, were “startling.”

Well, the premise might be.

Yes, before the Thunder have won a game in the Finals, much less won a title or the multiple titles required to have the “dynasty” word tossed around, they’re getting prime-era Warriors comps.

And while the Thunder’s organic (and Clippers-aided) rise has been fantastic — leading, obviously, to fantastical prognostications — if there is one thing we know about this new, fiscally punitive era of the NBA, it’s that dynasties are the exception, not the norm.

This is not yet the time to argue about if parity is good for the league (OK, a hint: I don’t think it is), but it’s also not the time to cast doom-and-gloom about the league’s future, with some team from Oklahoma running the show and everyone else unable to even contend.

We’ve heard that nonsense before.

The Lakers were supposed to be contenders year after year following their title in 2020. LeBron’s prime would never end, Anthony Davis had taken a step to the next level, and the Lakers’ brand and market supremacy would surely rule the league — right?

Then there was Milwaukee in 2021. Giannis Antetokounmpo had two MVP trophies and then, at age 26, a title. Elite role players, a great coach — Milwaukee was poised to dominate for years to come.

We can skip over 2022 — we all know that was the end of something great, not the start.

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But in 2023, it was Nikola Jokic’s league. Like Giannis, he had two MVP awards and then a title, with elite role players and a great coach. Denver was poised to dominate for years to come.

And we all entered this season expecting the Celtics to double down. Boston was +300 to win the title in the preseason — odds twice as good as the next-best team on the list and three times better than the Thunder (who had my preseason bet, in case you were wondering). But with a cash crunch coming for the roster and Jayson Tatum’s Achilles tendon ruptured, the Celtics are now 20-to-1 to win the title next season. And that feels generous.

Those, coincidentally, are the same odds the bookies are giving the Warriors.

In a league defined by dynasties, pundits and talking heads can’t help but anoint them prematurely. The league, its cheap owners and the basketball gods always have other ideas, it seems.

Now, I wouldn’t bet on the Dubs to win the title next season. They’ll only be older, and their age didn’t serve them well this past season. But the idea that the Warriors shouldn’t even bother to try — a suggestion I’ve heard from a few fans now — is absurd.

Such a tactic was somewhat justifiable during the Dubs’ salad days. No one was touching that team, which didn’t last as long as it could or should have. Titles were a foregone conclusion with two of the league’s three or four best players and the financial might to ignore the luxury tax.

But how did that work out for the Rockets? They bottomed out with the expressly stated goal of waiting out the Dubs. And while Golden State won another title in the 2020s, the Rockets finally made the playoffs for the first time in five years this April, just to play Steph Curry, Draymond Green and the Warriors again. Whoops!

Perhaps some things are inevitable in the NBA.

Not only does the Warriors’ front office owe another swing at the playoffs to Curry, Green and head coach Steve Kerr, but their puncher’s chance is better than you might think.

It’s not as if the Thunder didn’t go to seven games in the second round with a Nuggets team that has plenty of flaws around Jokic.

It’s not as if the team the Thunder beat in the Western Conference Finals, the Timberwolves, didn’t look flummoxed in Curry’s 13 healthy minutes of their second-round series. It won’t take much convincing for me to believe the Dubs could have won that series if Curry’s hamstring had stayed intact. (Or even if the Warriors had won Game 3.)

The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement might as well have been written to undercut teams like the Warriors — big-market teams with the means to maintain a dynasty. Boston had bad luck with Tatum’s injury, and now the new spending rules will take care of the rest of their title hopes this summer.

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And if it can take out the richest, strongest teams, what will those rules do to a small-market team?

The Thunder might be at the start of something great and long-lasting. They also reside in one of the smallest NBA markets, have never paid the luxury tax before (remember when they traded James Harden?) and employ MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is eligible for a massive extension this summer and a larger one next offseason.

But I’m sure the Thunder will be able to keep it rolling with a player making more than $80 million in a single season. When the Warriors “ruined the league” by signing Kevin Durant, the salary cap jumped from $70 million to $94 million. A decade later, there’s a player poised to make roughly that much himself.

Dallas — a massive market — balked at paying Luka Dončić. Will Oklahoma City do the same with SGA?

(What? If we can prematurely give the Thunder dynasty status, I can prematurely break them up.)

For now, I expect the Thunder to win this title with relative ease. It might even be a sweep for an all-time great team.

But Oklahoma City is a boomtown.

That also makes it a bust town.

Enjoy the high, Thunder fans. Even Warriors fans can tell you, they don’t last long these days.