The Oklahoma City Thunder could be the biggest team in the league during the past decade, even surpassing the Golden State Warriors. Back in the day, the Thunder had one of the most promising cores in basketball, counting with the likes of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Durant, a trio that took the team to the NBA Finals in 2012, where the Miami Heat of LeBron James defeated them in 5 games.
After that series, the team started losing their most important pieces, starting from Harden, who decided to leave and join the Houston Rockets after rejecting the Thunder’s office to sign a new contract aimed that would allow the team to keep him and Serge Ibaka on the roster.
Even though the Thunder was one of the best teams in the league and reached the WCF after that, a lot of people believe they could have taken all if they still had Harden with them.
One of the members of that team, Kendrick Perkins, expressed the same recently, even calling Harden the biggest responsible for OKC break up. Talking with Cassidy Hubbarth and Amin Elhassan on ESPN NBA’s “Hoop Streams”, Perks took a shot at the Beard for the way he managed that situation.
“Everyone made the sacrifice except for James Harden… Russ took a paycut, Kevin Durant took a paycut, even Serge Ibaka, even myself,” Perkins said.
https://twitter.com/SpaceCity_Scoop/status/1246198634951184386
This will go down as one of the biggest ‘what if’ in the history of the league. That team had everything to become a powerhouse, and they were on their way to do so after that 2012 Finals. Following that, KD and Russ stayed together until the former signed with the Golden State Warriors in 2016, making one of the most criticized moves in recent times. Three years and two titles after that, he joined the Brooklyn Nets last free agency.
Westbrook reunited with Harden last offseason when OKC shipped him to Houston in a blockbuster deal.
We can only imagine what would have happened with this team if they all stay together. For Perkins, though, we were about to see it until Harden decided to look for a new team.
