Oklahoma City Thunder are a dynasty in making and will end NBA's age of parity

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We’ll never know if Oklahoma City would have been able to rally from a 3-1 series deficit had Indiana been able to hold on to a late double-digit lead in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

But after Monday’s impressive Game 5 120-109 win by the Thunder, the question that sprang to mind was if anybody will be able to challenge them anytime soon?

The NBA’s best defensive team was so overwhelmingly constricting (15 steals and 12 blocks, with that 27 combined ‘stocks’ the most since Philadelphia in 1981) and got such an impressive one-two punch from Jalen Williams and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that one felt hard-pressed to think of any opponent that will be able to beat them four times in a series, keeping in mind the Thunder should only get better from here.

That’s the scary thing. Gilgeous-Alexander may or may not have another level in him (he’s already the league’s MVP, but always has improved). Even if he doesn’t, Williams, who scored 40 points in Game 5, only turned 24 a couple of months ago and isn’t close to his prime.

Chet Holmgren, who locked down the rim with his long arms, just turned 23 and is only getting started.

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Cason Wallace, who would be a starter on many teams but a key reserve for the stacked Thunder, is just 21; top defenders Lu Dort and Alex Caruso are 26 and 31, respectively, and giant point guard Nikola Topic — who fell to 12th in last year’s draft only because he was injured — will be ready for next season. The team also has all kinds of draft assets owed to it.

In short, this is just the start of a potential dynasty.

Yes, we said that about the Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook-James Harden Thunder who lost to the Miami Heat and never got back to the Finals, but this iteration of the Thunder is in a completely different situation. The odds of this being a one-and-done (which already would be more than the prior version) are extremely unlikely, even if team boss Sam Presti eventually will have to figure out a bit of a cap crunch from having so many good players.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver is about to hand a championship trophy to a ninth different franchise in 12 years in the job. His predecessor David Stern only gave it to eight different cities in 30 years.

This is an era of unprecedented parity for the league, but the Thunder are good bets to end all of that moving forward.

QUITE THE SECOND OPTION

Gilgeous-Alexander is the Thunder’s best player, but Williams is talented enough to match or even surpass his offensive production on any given night, while also playing good enough defence to make the all-defensive team.

Boston won last year in large part because No. 2 player Jaylen Brown stepped up to outplay All-NBA first team forward Jayson Tatum. Williams probably won’t win Finals MVP over Gilgeous-Alexander the way Brown did over Tatum, but he’s a massive part of the championship equation, too.

Usually the best player wins Finals MVP (Brown and Andre Iguodala, who shouldn’t have won the award over LeBron James or Stephen Curry, are the only outliers since Paul Pierce did it in 2008 and Tony Parker a year earlier), but Williams will probably get a vote or two if the Thunder finish off the Pacers.

Williams somehow didn’t seem impacted by a couple of hard falls in the previous game. He ran over the Pacers in Game 5 like a running back and looked like the best athlete on the floor all game.

He became only the fourth player that wasn’t clearly his team’s best to score 40 in a Finals game since 2000 (Westbrook, Kyrie Irving and Khris Middleton are the others). All while looking like Scottie Pippen at the other end of the floor.

Williams lasted until No. 12 in the 2022 draft, after the Thunder already had taken Holmgren third and Ousmane Dieng, who hasn’t worked out, 11th. He since has emerged as the best player from the 2022 crop, with a work ethic that has helped him turn weaknesses (like an inability to go left, leading to a poor playoffs last year) into strengths.

PACERS WINDOW CLOSING?

Meanwhile, the window might be closing for the Pacers. Yes, the Eastern Conference looks there for the taking again next year, but this is a far older team than the Thunder. Can they get to the Finals two years in a row with Pascal Siakam (great in Game 5) 32 by next playoffs? With Tyrese Haliburton, who has been battling injuries for a while now, with all this mileage under his belt and with Myles Turner nearing 30 and a free-agent-to-be, and with spark plug T.J. McConnell nearly 34?

Indiana was looking to take an unusual path to an NBA title. The vast majority of champions had an all-time great on the roster, some had two, and at worst one superstar plus a roster loaded with Top 10 players at most positions. Usually a lot of high draft picks, too.

But Indiana is different. Bennedict Mathurin (sixth overall), Jarace Walker (eighth, but not yet a factor) and Turner are the only players taken in the Top 11.

Most champs also are built on solid drafting or maybe that and a key free-agent signing or two. Not Indiana. The front office shrewdly traded for the team’s two best players, Haliburton and Siakam, plus a third starter, Aaron Nesmith, and top reserve big man Obi Toppin.

The only recent champion that has followed a similar path was Toronto. The Raptors traded for starters Kawhi Leonard, Marc Gasol and Danny Green (and Kyle Lowry years earlier), as well as sixth man Serge Ibaka, and Leonard (15th overall), was the only lottery pick on the roster.

It will be interesting to see if other teams try to copy Indiana’s blueprint now that it has been so successful, but it’s useful to note the Pacers have been operating this way to some degree for years.

Ownership wouldn’t accept a rebuild, so the team was often in the middle, without the hope on the way of a high draft pick, but not really a championship contender. Mathurin was only Indiana’s second Top 10 pick since 1989.