The Celtics probably look at the OKC Thunder as a bit of their own past. Maybe the Thunder can look to Boston as a bit of a glimpse into their own future.
It was kind of eerie to watch a young, talented team with an 18-point fourth-quarter lead, at home, slowly watch that lead evaporate. The execution that had just gotten them that lead, one that led me to declare Boston had been thoroughly beaten from start to finish for the first time this season, disappeared, taking their lead with it.
I’ve seen that movie before.
The Thunder are kind of a movie biopic adaptation of the current Celtics. The timelines don’t match up exactly, but the story of a team with way too many draft picks, a star with MVP hopes, and a talented young center coming off injury is based on a story we all know.
We are familiar with the notion of a team full of young talent and enough draft capital to trade for just about anyone being shoehorned into every rumor around. We know all about the debate between cashing in on young, homegrown talent and falling in love with it because fans hope they can buck conventional wisdom and just win it all with the guys they got.
“That's a talented young team,” Kristaps Porzingis said after the game. “I don’t believe this was some fluke game for them. They've been playing really well … really good team to go up against, and really good experience for us.”
Boston is what the Thunder hope to be, but they also serve as a cautionary tale for a young team seemingly skipping ahead a few steps early in the process. The Celtics did that too once upon a time, and they ended up making a trade that seemed to make sense at the time, but it ended up being for the wrong person, and it set them back.
In fact, Gordon Hayward talked about that team, the 2019 Celtics, that started out so promising but
“In my eyes, we all had too many agendas,” he said in a recent appearance on Paul George’s podcast. “The agenda to win the whole thing was not the main one. Not to blame anyone either because I think it was all human nature. …
“I'm coming back from where the last season that I played, I was an All-Star. So I'm trying to prove that I'm still an All-Star, Kyrie (Irving) was hurt the year before, too … So he's trying to prove like this is still his team. And then you've got (Jayson Tatum) and Jaylen (Brown) and Terry (Rozier) who are coming off where they're all starting, make it to the Eastern Conference Finals the year before. They're all trying to prove like we've arrived.”
That experience derailed Boston a bit, sending them into the Kemba Walker era, which ultimately begat the second Al Horford era (the first of which ended because of the Kyrie era). Both of those involved the Thunder as parking spots for big salaries.
Boston and Oklahoma City are forever linked by these moves. It makes sense that the Thunder are following in Boston’s footsteps. Which brings us back to Tuesday night on Reno Avenue, where the past and the future met like a warm and cold front, leading to a basketball thunderstorm on the floor.
“I thought it was two great teams," Joe Mazzulla said. "The game went about how I thought it would go as far as it coming down to the last couple of possessions.”
It didn’t look like it would. Boston made their choices with some of OKC’s young talent, daring Josh Giddey to beat them from deep. A 36% 3-point shooter this season, long-range bombs from him were something Boston could live with if it meant limiting Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at all. He burned them with 57% shooting from deep, just one of many young Thunder who didn’t seem to miss.
But Boston turned a sure blowout into a near-miracle, which is a testament to the resilience they’ve shown all season.
“They kept coming. They’re obviously a really talented team,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said “I thought we were a little sloppy on both ends of the floor trying to slam the door on that game, but then made big plays down the stretch and executed with poise.”
They made some big shots to actually close the game out, showing a maturity that might be a little advanced for the second-youngest team in the league.
OKC still has a ways to go before they are ready for primetime. They're damn good, but they might not still be the right kind of good to survive the madness of a playoff series. Which means they might feel the need to do something soon to improve their team.
The Celtics faced that same kind of dilemma last summer and they made the changes they needed to be the right kind of good. That's the kind of good that shakes off a loss like this and just keeps on marching. They’ll stay this good for a while because of the moves they made in the offseason.
But those moves were corrections of corrections, and now the Celtics face a smaller window to get a lot accomplished. The Thunder don’t want to follow in those exact footsteps. They don’t want a Kyrie messing with their locker room like he did in Boston. They want to get it right and keep their window of contention open a lot longer.
Between this OKC team and Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio, Boston got to see firsthand why they need to capitalize on this window while they have it. These teams won’t let Boston come up with another correction.