The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Good Vibes Are Being Put to the Test

The seven-foot-one-inch center Chet Holmgren, who was drafted by the Oklahoma City Thunder with the second pick of the 2022 N.B.A. draft, was immediately anointed as a star. Fans soon started dreaming of a career-long rivalry between him and the San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama, another seven-footer, who was drafted No. 1, in 2023. But one of Holmgren’s first acts as a member of the Thunder, after a spectacular performance in his Summer League début, was to insist that a teammate join him for the postgame interview, which traditionally goes to the game’s key player. He missed that season with a foot injury, but, when he came back, he insisted on continuing to do joint interviews. Once, the team’s P.R. director had to ask a security guard to join Holmgren, since all the other players had already gone off the court. It was his thing, Holmgren said. Then it became the team’s thing. Three, four, eight guys would stand together. Sometimes they’d drape the reporter in towels. It was charming—too cute for some. Where was the intimidation factor? They didn’t care; they kept showing up.

Jalen Williams, a six-five small forward, was drafted ten spots behind Holmgren. Earlier this season, after Holmgren fractured his pelvis, and with the team’s other big man, Isaiah Hartenstein, sidelined as well, the Thunder coach, Mark Daigneault, threw Williams in at center. So, for a few weeks, he went up against much larger players, protecting the rim, taking jump balls. Williams delivered, which seemed both improbable and unsurprising. Williams has long arms, a center of gravity he carries low, and an engine that never stops. He is only twenty-four years old, but already has a long history of doing the unexpected.

Williams was under-recruited out of high school, and went to Santa Clara, a mid-major team. He never played in an N.C.A.A. tournament, and was drafted, in 2022, twelfth by the Thunder, a team that had, the previous season, lost a game by seventy-three points, an N.B.A. record. He is not the Thunder’s best player—that is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league M.V.P.—but his improvement throughout the past three seasons, and in this one in particular, is a major reason behind the Thunder’s rise to the top of the league. He has no real weaknesses, and his versatility allows him to serve as the team’s skeleton key, unlocking different approaches on both sides of the floor.

His growth as a player has happened alongside the team’s. More than most N.B.A. squads, the Thunder have prioritized player development and a cohesive culture. “I think our connection has only grown,” Williams told me, two days before the Thunder faced the Indiana Pacers in Game One of the N.B.A. Finals. They have dinner together, hang out at home and on the road. Daigneault said that, at away games, whenever his office is connected to the team’s locker room, “I’ll get up to get a bottle of water out of the fridge and they’re, like, hanging out. They’re talking. It’s crazy, because you go to Starbucks, and everyone is on their phone.” In most N.B.A locker rooms, he added, players wear headphones and keep to themselves.

Players don’t need to like one another in order to play well together. Michael Jordan inspired fear and resentment in his teammates and won six championships. But the Thunder see their ethos as integral to their playing style, which depends on sustained confidence, readiness, and a willingness to go hard. The players know their strengths, and trust that they’ll get opportunities, which makes them easy to depend on. Pat Riley’s adage for the playoffs used to be “Play six, trust five.” The Thunder have been playing ten, and have got game-winning performances from players on the back end of the rotation, night after night. Alex Caruso, one of the team’s veterans, was a bench guy, until he was tasked with defending Nikola Jokić during the Thunder’s series against the Denver Nuggets, and did about as good a job as anyone has ever done of shutting Jokić down. There have been half a dozen examples like that. The team’s prowess on defense—which led the league in many metrics, some by a lot—is in part a “mind-set,” Williams said. It doesn’t matter how well you know what to do if you don’t go out there and do it with the utmost urgency. Most teams ratchet up the intensity during the post-season. The Thunder are different. They’ve been playing this hard all season long.

The Thunder had one of the best regular seasons in history, winning games by an average of nearly thirteen points—destroying a record set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers. Their over-all record, 68–14, was among the best ever. Aside from a tight series against the Denver Nuggets, who have Nikola Jokić, they glided into the Finals. But in the first game of the series, they ran up against a team that has lately made a habit out of impossible comebacks, the Pacers. On Thursday night, the Thunder forced nineteen turnovers in the first half alone. But, unusually, they had trouble converting those turnovers into points. On another night, when the Thunder’s shots were falling, it might have been a blowout. Instead, the Pacers took their first lead of the game with less than half a second to go.

Part of winning as a young team is learning how to handle losing. Part of the Thunder’s ethos is that their mode is always the same. “The one thing I’ll say about this team is we throw our best punch,” Daigneault said. “And that’s a comforting thing.” But they are now playing a team that is just as confident in their identity as the Thunder are in theirs, a team that plays fast and fearlessly, that is comfortable with chaos and big scoring deficits.

It’s easy to have fun when you’re winning. It’s easy to drape arms around shoulders, to love one another, to give a joyful bark in joy. In the glow of victory, it’s easier to give a full effort and then keep giving, to take the bruising impact on a screen, to sit on a bench always ready to perform, or to accept getting benched. I asked Williams how difficult it was to play through the fatigue that builds from having to defend against a team that plays with the Pacers’ speed. “This will be fun,” he answered, looking ahead to the series that was about to start. “You get tired, but you also forget that you’re tired.” Words only ever said by the young. ♦