The Boston Celtics set the blueprint for winning an NBA Championship. Gather some young assets and high picks, trade them for veteran stars and those hungry players will get everyone to buy into defense and team play. Being an instant contender is where it's at. Only suckers wait patiently for their own players to develop into a contending unit. Teams like the Trailblazers that try this route never get there. You need the established stars to win.
Well, the Thunder is here to flip that blueprint - and we want to start this year.
We think we have as good a player as anyone, and we chose very carefully who to bring in to play with him. They fit together. They have similar personalities. They know each others' games. They are a unit.
This is the first year we made the playoffs, and we took the eventual champions to seven games. Eventually, they beat us, but we made them work as hard or harder than anyone. We think what eventually did us in was our failure to match their size. Our team is talented and cohesive, but a team with a blatant physical advantage over us is tough to beat in a long series, and we don't want to be at that disadvantage again.
So the Thunder select Solomon Alabi, who is a legitimately sized center who fits with our team's demeanor and gives us a developing player who is specifically targeted at teams who try to wear us down with sheer size. He has a terrific defensive presence right away, and some surprising little skills on the other end we think he can build on. This is notice. We are serious and we are not just going to draft a Eurostash here. We are ready now. We are the new blueprint.
"You want me to stop the Lakers?!"
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