As it should be fairly obvious right now, other than the writing this from San Diego part, everything in that last paragraph is equally true of 2016 and 2026 - the interesting twist being the Thunder the upstart ten years back and a completely different Thunder team being the defending champs this time. Sure, you can quibble that the Thunder weren't really "upstarts" in 2016, having been to the finals four years earlier, and if anything established themselves before the Warriors outran them to a ring, but Durant, Westbrook, et. al, in 2016 were younger than teh Warriors core. And sure, the contours of the series a bit different, with the Warriors forcing Game 7 with their classic in Game 6 after being down 3-1, while this has been less dramatic to get here, but whats more interesting is how the NBA finds itself at a very similar place a decade later.
And what a decade it has been. First, the NBA became a joke when one of the main characters in that series, the alien best player (Kevin Durant) left to join the other team and basically make the next 2-3 seasons a fait accompli, only done in by crazy bad injury luck in the 2019 Finals. Then came Covid, which wreaked havoc the next two years. The NBA swung wildly from insanely predictable (its still ahrd to believe we sat through the exact same finals matchup four years in a row!) to more unpredictable than ever - more playoff upsets than normal, and the oft repeated stat of going seven seasons with seven different winners for the first time ever (starting with the 2019 Raptors). That seems to be coming to something of an end here, even if the Spurs do pull off the upset, because they seem primed for dynasty status as well.
It's funny that this ten year period is ending in parallel with the league's most drastic anti-tanking policy ever, which while to some degree seems well intentioned seems ludicrous to me (will give some thoughts on that later). The NBA just made sure that no team could be created like this current Spurs team was, with top-5 picks three straight years that have all paid off (foundationally, of course, with the Wemby good luck as the start of that). The Thunder aren't the direct result of tanking, but they definitely tried to in some degree (Chet), but also shrewd management that should pay off for years to come. What's more funny in this comparison is taht the Thunder and Spurs played in the playoffs in 2016, the series before the WCF that year, where the Thunder won in six games against teh 67-win Spurs. Both teams tore it down and rebuilt it completely in teh intervening ten years.
In some ways, the league never reached the heights it did in that 2016 playoffs - from the Warriors Game 6 win (and people will forget that the Game 7 that year was fairly competitive), to of course the Cavs 3-1 comeback. But so much of that season poisoned the league in terms of the ever increasing amount of threes, which also led to more and more blowouts, often determined by three point luck. Also, of course, with Durant's move that summer it started another round of super teams and stars switching teams at an increasingly dizzying rate, from Durant himself a few more times, same with Harden and Westbrook, the Kawhi/PG deals, and so much else. That seems to also be blocked off to some degree wtih the aprons and what not. That 2016 season led to a lot of stuff over the next ten years that is just no longer on the table.
I don't know who will win this Game 7 (I'm finishing this as the first quarter is wrapping up), or the Finals this year, and of course know even less of what teh next ten years will hold for the NBA. Maybe the Thunder and Spurs just trade titles back and forth. Maybe some new team rises up like OKC did. Maybe the Lakers will get another star to fall in their laps to pair with Luka. But as I look back at these ten years, it's interesting despite the inevitability of the Warriors, adn the star-hopping and super teams, how many winners we ended up seeing, how many great moments. All I can say is let's hope no key Spur goes and moves to OKC next year or vice-versa. At the very least it seems Wemby hates the Thunder, and Shae and Chet similarly on the Spurs. Good at least to have that competitiveness back.
