The Oklahoma City Thunder were minutes away from reaching the Finals last season. The team played incredibly well during the postseason. Their effort led to beating the 67-win Spurs in six games and taking the 73-win Warriors down to the wire.
Unfortunately, they were not able to finish the job. But that doesn’t mean that the Thunder played poorly by any means. In fact, the Warriors’ Andre Iguodala thinks that OKC was the best team throughout the playoffs.
In an appearance on The Breakfast Club, Iguodala stated (at the six minute mark of the preceding video) that the Thunder should have beaten his Warriors in the Western Conference Finals. He also maintained that the Thunder would have beaten the Cavaliers in the Finals.
In a way, it’s difficult to disagree with Andre Iguodala. The Thunder were probably the better team in the conference finals. They lost, in part, due to Klay Thompson and other Warriors raining fire from beyond the arc.
We underestimated the Cavaliers in the Finals, but the Thunder were likely better than Cleveland as well. In an alternate reality not far from the truth, the Thunder would have won the NBA Finals last season. But now, they have traded away Serge Ibaka and lost Kevin Durant in free agency to Iguodala’s Warriors. That’s the difference made in three minutes in Game Six of the Western Conference Finals.
