While they may be in the running for a bottom-three finish on the season, the OKC Thunder are a very young team already in possession of quite an extensive list of accomplishments throughout their 13-year existence.
Seeing postseason action in five straight years leading up to 2020-21, with 10 total throughout their league tenure including four Western Conference Finals trips and an NBA Finals berth back in 2012, overall team success has been the norm for the Sooner State’s lone pro ball club.
Of course, Oklahoma City has only proven to be as good as their top talents have allowed them to be, and they themselves have been overwhelmingly valuable to their success.
In fact, on a couple of specific occasions, two of them have proven to be most valuable.
Yes, of course, we’re talking about Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, both of whom took home the hardware for the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2014 and 2017, respectively.
Now, while the consensus vote is that Durant is the better overall player when it comes to both he and Westbrook, it would appear that the latter’s MVP season is widely viewed as more impressive, for he was working with a far less impressive supporting cast.
In fact, Draymond Green, who knows a thing or two about squaring off against the OKC Thunder during both of these campaigns, is of the belief that, aside from Westbrook, that 2017 team was absolutely putrid.
In fact, when speaking to The Athletic’s Sam Amick (subscription required), Green discussed how he “had no problem” with Westbrook winning the hardware over his fellow Golden State Warriors teammate, Stephen Curry, that season due to the fact that the Oklahoma City guard carried a “complete horses–t” team into the playoffs.
That year, the Thunder finished in the sixth seed out in the Western Conference standings with a record of 47-35, while Westbrook finished his first-full season whilst averaging a triple-double, averaging a league-leading 31.6 points to go along with 10.7 rebounds, 10.4 assists, and 1.6 steals per game.
Without him, the team would almost certainly have finished out of the postseason and in the lottery.
Though we wouldn’t go as far as to describe the 2016-17 team as being as bad as Green would, it’s certainly undeniable that, without Russ, they would have been far worse.