It has to be painful for Scott Brooks. Looking back at what he had coaching the Oklahoma City Thunder, and knowing that they came away with no championships can't be easy.

Brooks made an appearance on The Vertical Podcast with Chris Mannix yesterday and covered a variety of topics, one being his time in Oklahoma City.

Brooks delivered these interesting remarks:

Brooks suggested that the Thunder was “Golden State before Golden State was Golden State.”

“What we had was hard to get back,” Brooks said. “We had a young, dynamic, athletic, long, defensive-minded team that could score. The chemistry that that group had was pretty remarkable. They were all trying to figure out how to play in the NBA, let alone play together in the NBA, but they did. I give a lot of credit to the staff that we had there. We worked on it. I wasn't like an overnight success.

“I look back on the what ifs. It's natural to do that. We had unfortunate bad luck. Russell (Westbrook) … the injury in the first playoff (series). The next year we get to the conference finals and Serge (Ibaka) goes out. The following year, everybody. We had five broken bones in one season and in six seasons prior to that I think we had one. But that's part of the game. I hate that part of the game. That being said, we never made an excuse. I never did and our team never did, and that makes me proud.”

Brooks and the Thunder certainly had something special. After their appearance in the 2012 NBA Finals, we all thought many more were to come, and probably a few rings.

It all started to unravel when the franchise traded James Harden. Then, they got hit hard by injuries and never could recover as other dynasties emerged like the Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs, and Warriors.

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The Thunder never got to where the Warriors are now. But maybe they could have, and that's got to eat at Brooks all the time when he looks back on those days. One of the greatest “What if's” in NBA history.

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