Thunder Enter Series vs. Spurs with Pressure to Win NBA Title at All-Time High

It is a good thing the Oklahoma City Thunder pulled out a 118-104 Game 5 victory over the Dallas Mavericks to put a bow on their first-round series.

Losing wouldn’t have put them on the ropes. Every game against the Mavericks, even blowouts, felt like a slog. But the series was never really in doubt. As Anthony Slater of the Oklahoman pointed out afterward: 

The Thunder’s 18.2 average margin of victory against Mavericks was fifth largest in last 10 years.

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) April 26, 2016

Dropping Game 5 would have, however, bilked the Thunder of rest before their second-round bout with the San Antonio Spurs, which tips off Saturday. And they need that rest—that additional time to prepare for the NBA’s second-best team and a high-stakes matchup that will have a lasting impact on the franchise’s future.

These Thunder, you see, have never been under more pressure to win a title than they are now. And that, admittedly, is not ideal.

The Association’s title race has time after time been diluted down to a two-team race—a three-squad chase at most. The Golden State Warriors just wrapped up the best regular season in league history; the Spurs paced all teams in net rating during that same campaign; and the Cleveland Cavaliers, despite being clearly inferior to the Western Conference’s topmost powerhouses, are heavy favorites to make it out of the Eastern Conference, drumming up their championship value by default.

That has left the Thunder, along with a select few other hopefuls, on the outskirts of the title bubble. Their candidacy has been deemed artificial. The idea that they could usurp both Golden State and San Antonio, two of the best teams ever, was too impractical, too impossible, to genuinely envision.

And yet, residing among the NBA’s almosts isn’t good enough for the Thunder, not even when bowing down to the Warriors and Spurs is expected and, subsequently, acceptable.

Oklahoma City has two of the world’s top 10 talents in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Serge Ibaka completes a Big Three that is second to one or two other trios but no more. Dion Waiters has established himself as a viable catch-and-shoot weapon. Steven Adams has struck the perfect balance between pesky and erratic. Enes Kanter is the real Sixth Man of the Year among volume scorers.

Sprinkle in Durant’s impending free agency, and this is the Thunder’s last opportunity to vindicate their nucleus from doubt.

Winning a title removes the guesswork from Durant’s open-market exploration. It turns the free agencies of Ibaka and Westbrook for 2017 into presumed formalities. It makes paying Adams (extension eligible) and Waiters (restricted free agent) this summer that much easier. It makes Kanter’s contract from last year look that much better.

This is, without question, a tough burden to bear. But it’s a fitting one, too. The Thunder have employed this championship core for the better part of a decade. They have used up their grace period, one they shortened with an ahead-of-schedule NBA Finals appearance in 2012, and then some.

Plus, while the harrowing task of surviving San Antonio and then most likely Golden …

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