Gut check for the ol' OKC hater

I was honestly kind of worried that all this work I've done becoming a better person might prevent me from rooting against the Thunder with the appropriate level of passion and determination.

On Tuesday night, I did something I have not done in five years: I watched an Oklahoma City Thunder playoff game.

The last time I did that, Damien Lillard hit a 3-pointer from another time zone, and I thought that was just about the best thing ever. Maybe not as sweet as when the Golden State Warriors came back from a 3-1 deficit to win the Western Conference in 2016, but pretty freaking close. Lillard’s shot nuked the last incarnation of the Thunder’s Golden Era. Russell Westbrook was traded after that season so was Paul George, and while the Thunder made the playoffs the following season with Chris Paul, no one mistook Oklahoma City for a threat anymore.

Not until this year. The Thunder are the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs. They swept the (utterly disinterested) New Orleans Pelicans in the first round. OKC is an eminently exciting team with an MVP-caliber player in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and geometric anomaly in Chet Holmgren, and when their second-round series with Dallas opened on Tuesday night I tuned in to see if I still had it in me to hate the Thunder.