Champs, Chumps, and Kevin Durant

Three-Dot Monday 6.23

And they could get a lot better. (Courtesy: NBA/Facebook)

First of all, the newly crowned NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder should be preparing a parade for downtown Seattle instead. Let us never forget that the Supersonics were stolen from their rightful home and taken to Oklahoma and the NBA not only was okay with it, but not-so-subtly encouraged it. As one of my favorite movie quotes goes, “It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

That said, enough time has passed for me at least to actually appreciate this Thunder squad for being a really good team. As I said last week, they remind me a lot of the 2015 Golden State Warriors in that they are set up to be a championship contender for several more years, though to really hit that next level they need one more piece.

And that piece is a real three-point shooter. I know it sounds weird that in these days of every team taking boatloads of threes that the new champs would be one of the worst long-distance teams in the league… but it is true. They shot 33.9% in the playoffs, the worst of any team that got out of the first round (and 13^th overall).

The easiest way to solve this problem is to have budding superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander become a better three-point shooter. He was the first player in 25 years to win both regular season MVP, the regular season scoring title, and Finals MVP… and at 28.3%, he was the worst three-point shooter on his team who played any sort of significant minutes in the playoffs.

Not only that, of all the playoff participants, his three-point percentage was 101^st! He was just ahead of the one-and-only Draymond Green (who checked in at 26.7%) and worse than other non-three-point-specialists Russell Westbrook, Dillon Brooks, and Karl Anthony-Towns.

And SGA, once again, is the first guy in 25 years to win both regular season MVP, the regular season scoring title, and Finals MVP. The last one was Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 when the Lakers won their first of three straight NBA Championships. The only guy to do it multiple times, of course, was some fella named Jordan… And the first guy to do it was still known as Lew Alcindor at the time, so it’s a pretty good accomplishment…

So yeah, imagine SGA doing something as well as Shaq, and then getting better. And he’s the first Canadian to win Finals MVP, which in today’s world is even more chuckle-worthy…

The Colorado Rockies have more wins this season than the Thunder did their entire playoff run… but just barely. An NBA Championship team wins 16 playoff games, while the Rockies now have 18 total victories in the 2025 MLB season. The real issue for the Rockies is that the Thunder won 16 of their 23 playoff games, while the Rockies are a brutal 18-60…

(The Rockies need only to win two of their next 22 games to at the very least equal the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who were an MLB-record-low 20-80 after 100 contests, as detailed in my book which you should buy.)

Although, by winning their 18^th game on Sunday, the Rockies did pass the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers for total wins in their first four seasons. The Bucs might be the worst expansion team in NFL history- they went 0-14 in 1976 and then won a total of 17 games in their next three seasons. So at least the Rockies have gotten past that?

And just because it’s fun to note, the New York Mets were the first team to get 18 wins this MLB season… on April 23^rd, when they improved to 18-7. We are EXACTLY two months past that day, and the Rockies JUST got 18 wins. I mean, yikes.

But the real yikes was Tyrese Haliburton going down with an Achilles tear partway through the first quarter last night. If the Indiana Pacers had any chance of beating the Thunder for the title, it would have taken a monster game from Haliburton and he was on the way, with nine points in the first seven minutes.

And playing with a strained right calf, when he planted that foot and accelerated, the Achilles gave way. Most guys say when the Achilles goes it feels like somebody kicked them in the leg. He clearly felt the same way and you can see it on the replay. As he’s going to the ground his head whips around to look for the guy who did it and he doesn’t see anybody, and when he crashes the pain kicks in and he knows it’s over.

In a freaky coincidence, three guys tore their Achilles this postseason and they all wear number zero. First was the Milwaukee Bucks Damian Lillard, who insists he doesn’t wear zero but the letter “O” to represent his hometown of Oakland, then the Boston Celtics Jayson Tatum, and now Haliburton. All three are out for a good long time, with the most optimistic scenarios have them returning sometime late in the 2025-’26 season, but it’s more likely ‘26-’27 for all of them.

Those three identical injuries are making some wonder if they’re all connected, but the real connection is the calf muscle to the Achilles tendon, which is a thing. That explains Haliburton, while Lillard was out for a while with blood clots in his right calf so that appears to this very-non-doctor to at least be a potential indicator, and apparently Tatum also had calf issues prior to the tear.

The most famous calf-issue-to-Achilles-tear-in-the-Finals player is the one and only Kevin Durant, who tore his in the 2019 Finals in his last game with the Warriors. He missed the entire next season (you may recall there was some speculation that because of COVID and the delayed NBA season in the Orlando bubble, Durant might have returned had his next team, the Brooklyn Nets, made a significant playoff run into August, but it didn’t happen), and is now on his third team since then, having just been traded to the Houston Rockets.

If I told you that a guy was going into his 18^th season in the NBA with his 5^th team and had won two championships with the Warriors, you’d figure that guy was probably pretty decent but something of a journeyman role player who lucked out being on the same team with Stephen Curry at the right time.

Well, that’s Kevin Durant’s sneaky-bad NBA bio. The Rockets will be his 5^th team- six if you count the first year with the Sonics before they moved to Oklahoma City (what a coincidence he got traded on the day they won the title). I’m not denying he’s one of the best players in NBA history- but he’s dangerously close to having an almost-20-year career where his only titles came with the greatest shooter of all time.

Of course, Durant did with Finals MVP both championship years with the Warriors, and those teams are considered some of the best in NBA history… but the fact remains he didn’t win a title before Steph, and he most certainly hasn’t won after Steph. He’s never even made the Conference Finals again (and this year Phoenix didn’t even make the play-in tournament).

So now he tries again with the Houston Rockets. And once again he’s in a tough place because they play in the same division as the newly-crowned champion Oklahoma City Thunder.

Could be worse for KD, though. He could now be on the Rockies, and not the Rockets.

“Whoo, I’m not going to the Rockies!” (Courtesy: AZRepublic.com)