ISAIAH HARTENSTEIN HAD done almost everything expected of him during his delayed debut for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
After missing this season’s first 15 games due to a broken left hand, the center filled up the stat sheet with 13 points, 14 rebounds, three assists and four blocks in a Nov. 20 home win over the Portland Trail Blazers. It was the type of impact performance the Thunder anticipated when Hartenstein signed a three-year, $87 million deal in free agency over the summer.
But Hartenstein still needed to put the finishing touches on his first official outing in an Oklahoma City uniform.
“You know you gotta bark, right?” Thunder forward Jalen Williams said to Hartenstein seconds after the final buzzer sounded.
As is uniquely the norm with the Thunder, Hartenstein had plenty of company while he answered a few questions from the team’s sideline reporter Nick Gallo.
“Nick, he’s out of breath,” Williams jokingly chimed in from behind Hartenstein, eager to get to the grand finale. As the interview ended, Hartenstein grabbed the microphone with both hands and released what he later termed “a solid, little bark” as a rite of initiation.
“Roo-roo-roo! Roo-roo-roo!”
It’s a silly tradition that started midway through last season, when the Thunder were in the process of becoming the youngest No. 1 seed in NBA history. It began with an impromptu bark from Williams, known as “JDub” in Thunder parlance to avoid being confused with Jaylin “J-Will” Williams.
The barking became an audible expression of the group’s mix of goofy personalities. The Thunder take their jobs extremely seriously. Themselves, not so much.
“Just assimilate into the culture, man,” Alex Caruso told ESPN. “It’s a long year. For us to get to where we want to be, we got to be one and together, and that’s part of it.”
The post-win interviews on the television broadcast, which always are group affairs and occasionally end with barking, display the bond of an ascending contender that has a collegial feel and a professional approach.
Oklahoma City — only a few years removed from having one of the NBA’s worst records — has remained true to its core organizational philosophies even as the Thunder emerged as an elite team earlier than anticipated. Coach Mark Daigneault has managed to get one of the league’s youngest teams to consistently embrace the mundane — from skill work to game-plan detail — even while experiencing success that often results in inflated egos.
“I think that’s why we’ve been able to accelerate our development,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. “All those little things that go into winning, they mean a lot to us because of our competitiveness and what our common goal is as a group.”
The Thunder made jumps of 16 and 17 wins over the past two seasons, respectively, as 2022 lottery picks Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren proved themselves as star-caliber complements to Gilgeous-Alexander. Instead of trading for another star in the wake of last spring’s second-round playoff exit, Thunder general manager Sam Presti targeted top-notch role players who fit the Thunder’s culture and style of play, signing Hartenstein and trading for Caruso, who became the oldest player on the roster (30) when he was acquired in a summer trade with the Chicago Bulls.
As this season nears the midway point, Oklahoma City is on a 69-win pace despite Holmgren playing in only 10 games before suffering a fractured pelvis that has sidelined him since Nov. 11. The Thunder are especially dominant on the less glamorous end of the floor. They are allowing a league-low 102.9 points per 100 possessions, 3.8 fewer than any other team, entering Thursday’s home against against the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, who snapped Oklahoma City’s 15-game winning streak on Jan. 8.
The combination of what Caruso describes as “youthful energy” and “discipline” made an immediate impression on Oklahoma City’s veteran offseason additions.
“I think a lot of young guys focus too much on what’s going to happen in the future, but I feel like they’re really good at making sure we’re getting better each day,” said Hartenstein, 26, the third-oldest player on the Oklahoma City roster behind Caruso and reserve forward/center Kenrich Williams. “If you want to be a great team in this league, you have to focus on the boring stuff, the details. They do a great job in that.”
DAIGNEAULT COMPARES GILGEOUS-ALEXANDER’S evolution into one of the league’s best players to investing in a mutual fund. It’s not flashy, just steady gains compounding day after day.
It’s an analogy that also applies to the Thunder’s path from a rebuilding project to the clear-cut Western Conference favorite in the four and a half years since Presti promoted Daigneault from assistant to head coach as Oklahoma City was in the process of tearing down the roster around Gilgeous-Alexander.
Presti — armed with a historic stockpile of draft picks that was built beginning with the 2019 blockbuster deal that sent Paul George to the LA Clippers and brought Gilgeous-Alexander (and eventually Jalen Williams) to Oklahoma City — refrained from making splashy trades in an attempt to expedite the franchise’s return to relevance. Instead, the Thunder leaned into patience and player development, enduring two seasons near the bottom of the Western Conference standings at the start of Daigneault’s tenure before the progress became apparent.
“Those years when we weren’t the greatest, he always made sure that we were playing the game the right way and doing the stuff that would transfer once we became a better team,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And that’s carried over obviously with the more talent we get and the better we get.”
Gilgeous-Alexander worked his way from intriguing prospect to All-Star to arguably the NBA’s most well-rounded superstar since arriving in Oklahoma City. Luguentz Dort, the only other player remaining from that 2019-20 roster, has transformed from an undrafted player with an ugly jumper to one of the league’s premier 3-and-D players, a perimeter stopper who has shot 39.7% from 3-point range over the last season and a half. The rest of the roster has followed suit.
Rival executives and coaches widely believe that the Thunder are in the early stages of an extended window as a contender, but Oklahoma City’s roster has been built without repeated swings in the upper half of the draft lottery.
Chet Holmgren, selected second in the 2022 draft, is the lone single-digit draft pick on the roster and one of only four first-rounders in the Oklahoma City rotation. It’s a deep roster full of under-the-radar developmental success stories occupying key roles, the sort of team that is the result of tremendous scouting, which is still how Presti views himself at the core.
Isaiah Joe, a skinny, sharpshooting reserve guard whom Daigneault likes to refer to as one of the league’s toughest players pound-for-pound, was a waiver-wire pickup. Aaron Wiggins, a backup forward, was the No. 55 pick in 2021. They both earned new four-year contracts over the summer.
This summer’s major additions, Caruso and Hartenstein, fit into the ethos of grinders made good. Like Dort, they both had to toil in the G League to earn end-of-the-roster spots in the NBA and work their way into becoming essential role players. Caruso actually began his pro career with Oklahoma City Blue, the Thunder’s G League affiliate, before leaving for a two-way deal with the Los Angeles Lakers. With a smile, Presti cited this as proof that he’s made his share of talent evaluation errors.
Daigneault has attributed “an uncommon maturity” of a roster that still ranks as the league’s fourth-youngest weighted by playing time, according to ESPN Research, as an essential element of Oklahoma City’s success.
“They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves,” Daigneault said. “I think that’s one of the things that Sam’s nailed in this process. The types of people that we’ve brought in the door, regardless of whether they’re still here or they’re not, by and large, have been committed professionals that are ambitious, but they’re also willing to complete the team.
“So that’s been a huge starting point. And then you take those people, you put ’em in a stable environment, you educate ’em on the value of all the invisible things, and you hammer that over and over again. You hammer that environment over and over again. You hammer those messages over and over again and then you double down on the people that you have and just allow that to grow and compound.”
THE GROUP POSTGAME interviews are cute demonstrations of the Thunder’s chemistry, but they have also been fodder for criticism from a four-time NBA champion.
Golden State Warriors power forward Draymond Green called the Thunder’s group interviews “a little alarming” during an early-season edition of his podcast.
“There’s a certain seriousness that it takes to win in this league, and there’s a certain fear you have to instill in teams in order to win,” Green said. “And I don’t know if they’re instilling that fear in teams with all of the bromance and stuff after the game.”
Green’s comments, whether serious concern or a trolling attempt to create controversy for a rival, went viral. But they didn’t elicit much more than a shrug from the Thunder, a team that does not do drama.
“We’re just concerned about what’s going on here and everything else kind of takes care of itself,” Jalen Williams said, claiming it was the first he’d heard of Green’s comments when asked about them a few days later. “I feel like it’s kind of weird to have a strong opinion on it, but we’re just so locked in on what we have going on here.”
The Thunder have a point differential of plus-12.8 points per game, which would break the record set by the 1971-72 Lakers (plus-12.3) for the best in NBA history. They have lost consecutive games just once this season and have yet to lose three in a row. That’s a pretty convincing way to prevent questions about whether a team is serious enough.
“We all know it’s a job and then it’s a business, but at the end of the day, we’re playing a game we love every day,” Dort said. “Every time we wake up, we’re doing something fun and we want to keep that in everything. I mean, this game brings a lot of stress and a lot of stuff outside, so whenever we’re together, we want to have as much fun [as] we can have. That’s just some of the goofiness that we started doing and it helps the team, honestly.”
Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t bark after his Dec. 26 performance that Daigneault described as “a masterpiece,” when he carried the Thunder to a road win over the Indiana Pacers by scoring 16 of his career-high-tying 45 points in the final seven minutes.
But Gilgeous-Alexander’s final words of his on-court interview with Gallo did provide a glimpse of the Thunder’s bond.
“All right, let’s go to Charlotte!” Gilgeous-Alexander said with genuine enthusiasm before revealing why the next stop, and a meeting with one of the NBA’s worst teams, had been circled on the Thunder’s calendar for weeks.
“It’s Wiggs’ jersey retirement in Charlotte,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, pointing his thumb behind him at Aaron Wiggins as Kenrich Williams playfully massaged the reserve forward’s shoulders and Jaylin Williams jokingly smacked him in the chest. “Let’s hurry up and get there!”
A day ahead of their game against the Hornets, the team’s entire traveling party boarded a bus at their hotel in Charlotte for a 90-minute drive to High Point, N.C., to visit Wiggins’ high school alma mater, Wesleyan Christian Academy. Wiggins was honored in a pregame ceremony, and the Thunder stayed for the first quarter to watch his younger brother, Zacch, play before getting back on the bus and making the journey back to the Charlotte hotel.
The Thunder made a similar trip — 90 minutes each way from Dallas to Waco — to celebrate Kenrich Williams when his high school retired his number the night before a December road game last season.
“This is my only team, but I don’t think it’s like that on every team,” Jalen Williams said. “It’s something that nobody on the squad takes for granted.”
