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Kevin Durant may not be the most beloved NBA player due to his decision to join the Golden State Warriors back in 2016; this decision of his robbed their greatest rival, the Oklahoma City Thunder, of a fighting chance. But before his infamous free-agency move, Durant was universally admired, as he was leading a homegrown Thunder team built through the draft to great heights.
Through it all, one of the greatest small forwards of all time has been through plenty of heated playoff battles. One playoff series in particular came to the current Phoenix Suns star's mind when he was asked on X (formerly known as Twitter) what the most difficult playoff battle he was able to overcome was — the Thunder's 2012 Western Conference Finals matchup against a red-hot San Antonio Spurs team.
“2012 wcf, spurs…against a team who won like 20 games n a row or some s**t. Down 0-2, won 4 straight games to go to the finals…legendary series imo, especially that game 6,” Durant wrote.
Indeed, the Thunder may have arrived that year as a legitimate contending team, but they did not have much experience, especially compared to that Spurs squad that still had its legendary trio of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker intact. That team also had a young Kawhi Leonard locking up players on the wing.
They were coming off a heartbreaking exit from the Western Conference Finals in 2011, and it looked like they were primed to experience the same fate a year later. But the Thunder managed to dig deep, with James Harden blossoming into a huge star in the grand postseason stage. They were hanging on by a thread, but they managed to rattle off four straight wins to knock off a brilliant Spurs team — setting the stage for Oklahoma City's first (and only) trip to the NBA Finals to date.
Thunder remain the NBA's greatest what-if after whiffing on the Kevin Durant era
It doesn't happen too often that a team manages to draft three Hall of Famers in consecutive drafts. But the Thunder managed to do that with their selections of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden — and in the early 2010s, it looked as though they were going to be the most unstoppable force in the league for years.
Alas, after the Thunder lost in the 2012 NBA Finals, they decided to trade Harden — a decision that haunts the franchise to this day. Harden looked like a long-term keeper after he turned their series against the Spurs on its head, so it was all the more baffling that the team traded him to save pennies — damaging the franchise's long-term contending prospects, leading to Durant's eventual departure.
