With NBA history on the line, the Oklahoma City Thunder don’t need any more motivation to play their best in Sunday’s pivotal Game 7 at the Paycom Center. Still, Draymond Green gave them some extra incentive to win with his claim that this year may be their last chance to get it done.
“It’s a coin flip. All it takes is one Kyrie Irving shot to flip the game, one LeBron James chase-down block,” said Draymond on his podcast. “That’s what OKC is up against; they were supposed to win. The pressure is all on them. Indiana is coming out is coming out with a free swing and they are coming out playing loose like ‘we got nothing to lose, we were never supposed to be here in the first place.’ I want to see what OKC is going to do because if they don’t win this championship, they may never win the championship.”
The Thunder are still relatively young with their top three players all being 26 or younger (SGA is 26, Jalen Williams is 23, and Chet Holmgren is 22). Many of their regular rotation players are still on their rookie contracts, and they have a whole stockpile of draft picks to keep building up their roster.
By all accounts, it seems like the Thunder are built for lasting success. For Green, however, he predicts Oklahoma City could resort to tweaking the roster if they lose in Game 7.
“I think they are in a tough position if they don’t win a championship,” said Green. “When you get the opportunity to win a championship, if you win it, you give yourself the opportunity to win more. But if you lose it, now you start tweaking stuff and those tweaks could put you further away than you were.”
As a 4x champion and former Defensive Player of the Year, Draymond knows what it takes to win at the highest level, and he is uniquely qualified to measure and determine NBA title odds. As young and talented as the Thunder are, Green says they cannot let this opportunity slip if they want to maintain their upward trajectory.
In a league where a new champion is crowned every year, parity is at an all-time high, and the competition has never been steeper. In the West alone, the Thunder will have to worry about teams like the Nuggets, Timberwolves, and Lakers for years to come, and success is not guaranteed.
If the Thunder miss out on this opportunity, they may never get the chance again, whether it’s due to injuries, roster changes, or simply bad luck. We haven’t had a repeat champion since 2018, and with the NBA deeper than ever, the Thunder will have to overcome massive odds just to get back to the position they’re in now.
For a team that finished first in the West with the MVP and the best record in the league, anything less than the championship is a failure, and their fans expect nothing less than absolute victory. They know that you can’t take the Finals for granted and that it could be their best chance to win the title for years.
