Thunder Provide Trail Blazers the Blueprint, but it May Not Happen Quickly
A blowout loss to Oklahoma City showed how far the Blazers are from the Thunder's fast-tracked rebuild.
PORTLAND, Ore. — It wasn't long ago that the Thunder were where the Trail Blazers are right now.
In fact, it was so recent that watching what Oklahoma City, on the second night of a back-to-back after going to overtime at Golden State, did to Portland on Sunday might give people unrealistic expectations of how quickly the Blazers can get to that place.
The Thunder on Sunday didn't look like an emerging contender fighting for respect. They looked like a veteran playoff team that knew how to play their game and was used to handling business against the teams they're "supposed" to beat, which is what the Blazers are to most of the NBA at this beginning stage of their rebuild.
Putting aside the outlier shooting—Oklahoma City shot 60.5 percent from the field and an outrageous 22-of-36 from three-point range—they were clinical and together. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's 28 points came on 13 shots and only one three-pointer in 22 minutes. Chet Holmgren had 16 points in just 20 minutes. With Jalen Williams out, they plugged rookie Cason Wallace into the starting lineup and didn't miss a beat.
For at least two years, the Thunder have been the League Pass hipster's team of choice, the Draft Twitter darlings you can earn credibility online by saying is your favorite team to watch. But I don't think even their biggest optimists thought they'd be this good, and certainly not this fast. Given the health and chemistry concerns with every other would-be contender in the conference, would it be a complete shock if this group made the Western Conference Finals well ahead of schedule?
They're the blueprint for how small-market teams that aren't free-agent draws can build a contender. In short, they're what the post-Damian Lillard Blazers are trying to emulate.
"I see some similarities with where we are and how they've built their thing from where they were a couple years ago, when they were really young," Chauncey Billups said before the game. "They've built it right. A couple years ago I said, 'When they grow up a little bit, they're going to be dangerous.'"
It's not common for teams to be back to contender status this quickly after starting a rebuild. Trading Paul George and Russell Westbrook in the summer of 2019 was the beginning of the reset, but it didn't really start in earnest until a year later, after a stopgap year with Chris Paul. When Sam Presti traded Paul to Phoenix before the 2020-21 season, it was the beginning of a two-year bottoming out that included some tanking that was just as blatant as what the Blazers engaged in the second halves of the last two seasons. Last year, with Holmgren missing the entire season, they took enough of a step forward to at least reach the play-in. Now, they're here.
But it took more than the simplified process of tanking for a couple years and stockpiling draft picks. That's something teams have tried for years, and continue to try, and more often than not it doesn't work as well as they envision.Â
The Thunder did get extraordinarily lucky on a few fronts—that Presti had the Clippers over a barrel in the George trade negotiations and was able to land Gilgeous-Alexander, a future All-NBA guard, for one. But Presti has been meticulous in how he's built this iteration of the Thunder. They've nailed their own lottery picks (Holmgren, Williams, Wallace) by disregarding consensus and going after a specific kind of multi-talented athlete at every turn. They've gotten lucky with a few scrap-heap signings (Isaiah Joe, who I've never seen miss a three-pointer in any Thunder game I've ever watched). They seem to have hired the right coach in Mark Daigneault, who ascended from the G League ranks to replace Billy Donovan in 2020.
Hearing Daigneault talk now about the beginning of their rebuild isn't all that different from what Billups has been preaching since the start of camp.
"There's talent there," Daigneault said when I asked him pregame where he saw the Blazers' rebuild in relation to the one he oversaw. "And you can see from a coaching standpoint, there's a level of discipline that's being instilled in the way they're competing when they're on a little bit of a losing streak and they're down some guys. That's usually a good barometer. That's something we tried to do. There were a lot of times when we weren't getting the outcomes, but we were trying to build habits and invest in an environment. Those are the same priorities we have now. The goalposts haven't moved from what we've established over the last couple of years."
The most impressive thing about the Thunder's rebuild, and something the Blazers have largely had this season, is continued buy-in when the results are what they have been for Portland, which has now lost seven straight games and is tied for the third-worst record in the NBA. Over the past three years in Oklahoma City, that never seemed to waver.
"We're getting better at dealing with adversity," Jabari Walker said. "I don't think the reason we're losing has anything to do with our energy. As far as our group, we hang out off the court, we enjoy each other's presence. We're very close. It's just something about on the court and how we click with each other, it comes with time."
The Blazers' schedule doesn't get any easier over the next month. The next game they might go into as the favorite is against Washington on Dec. 21. Ending the losing skid before then would help with morale, and maybe it will happen in the next week, when Billups said there's a real chance Malcolm Brogdon and Scoot Henderson could return to the lineup. These losses may help the long-term organizational goal—the Blazers probably need to hit on one or two more draft picks to complete the puzzle—but that doesn't make it easier for the people having to take them in the moment.
Most rebuilds take a lot longer than three years, but if the Blazers play things right as an organization, they might have seen their future on Sunday.
"This is probably the most complete, balanced team we've played all year," Billups said. "From an offensive standpoint and how they like to play … They're a complete team. They've done it right. They're young and they compete every single night. They've got so many players that can lead."
That sounds a lot like what the Blazers want for themselves. Achieving it as fast as the Thunder have is far from promised.