It's not only that Durant is the most magnificently smooth player I've seen, always seemingly assured of making the basket. It's that he -- and the rest of Thunder's core players -- are younger than 25 but already so ascendant. To revisit what I wrote in November 2010 about the Thunder (and two years earlier about that brief era of the Trailblazers), they're "athletic, versatile players who seem to genuinely like each other and realize they can do something special together," in a moment "where everyone understands what's happening, appreciates the potential, and starts to click with each other." And now, the Thunder have fully arrived, looking great in the NBA Finals! So rarely does the fleeting promise of greatness coalesce like this, so rarely does the indie phenomenon reach the big stage and stay true to who it is. There weren't any compromises and there didn't have to be.
The central question is: Are the Thunder cooler because they're in Oklahoma City? I have to answer, Yes, because Oklahoma City is otherwise so anonymous. In an era when basketball stars apparently only want to play in cities with some combination of great weather, exciting nightlife, and low income taxes, Durant and his co-star, point guard Russell Westbrook, have already signed long-term lucrative contracts to stay in Oklahoma. (The team's two other young leaders, guard James Harden and forward Serge Ibaka, haven't yet and it's unclear if the Thunder can afford them all.) Durant's and Westbrook's decisions reveal their personalities -- mature, sensible and fantastic. They've chosen a homegrown, organic scene over an expensively assembled one, place over placelessness, and the local over the imported. It's almost as though the Thunder are urban planners.
By the way, did you hear that Oklahoma City is redesigning its downtown streets?
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