How Oklahoma City Thunder can win an NBA title next season? NBA Feature Part 1
Oklahoma City Thunder has been a team on a constant rise and looking at the progress, they don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
Ever since the franchise relocated from Seattle a lot of changes have taken place. The most prominent being the approach taken by the Thunder management in order for the team to be a success in the coming years.
Oklahoma City has been functioning on a strategy to draft young talented players and work with those prospects as they look to build a cohesively strong team. They brought in the likes of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James
Harden and combined together with a mix of truly capable backup players.
In recent years, Serge Ibaka has come forward as being a key member of the team as the Thunder’s have been progressing. After only winning 23 games in their first ever season, OKC followed it up by making it to the playoffs the
next year.
But that was not enough; they backed it up with another strong season to make it to the Western Conference Finals which was followed up by yet another improved year which saw a berth to the NBA Finals.
As the pattern goes, The Thunder’s are set to go all the way next season and lay the foundation down towards building a dynasty. However luck and talent alone will not just do it for them, they would have to bring about significant
changes if they want to bring home an NBA Championship.
Unlike their rivals, Oklahoma have not made any significant changes to their line up and as the current roster stands, it is more than capable of serving the purpose but that is not without some much needed hard work.
One of the main things that would need to change is the role Kevin Durant has on the floor. As explosive as he may be in the scoring department and being NBA’s scoring champion three years in a row is mere proof of that fact but
Durant will have to be more of a leader on the defensive end.
It’s not like Durant does not play defence at all, it is the fact that he is unable to keep the same defensive intensity for the whole length of a game which his counter parts like LeBron James are able to achieve. So if he brings
a lot more intensity on the defensive end and that combined with his offensive prowess can be a splendid combination.
However Durant is not the only person that would need to do a lot of stepping up as Ibaka also needs to step in to being a true big man. In his case the roles may be reversed as he is spectacular on the defensive end but has been
reluctant to show his presence in the paint on the offensive end.
They may have been able to get away with only Durant, Westbrook and Harden handling much of the scoring but if they want to be a successful team in the future, Ibaka and a few other bench players will need to be a lot more productive.
Because these things may have not affected them in the past but if they really want to have title ambitions, they will need significant changes to be brought about.
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