In an aborted article preparing for the 2024–2025 Thunder season, my angle was going to be that the epoch of good times had passed for Oklahoma City fans. The pinnacle of being a Thunder fan, I was going to suggest, was after Game 1 of the 2024 Western Conference Semifinals.
Clearly, that would have been proven wrong.
At that moment, though, the team was coming off a first-round sweep of New Orleans and had just dismantled the Dallas Mavericks to open the next round. Vibes were at an all-time high. The players were barking in postgame interviews. The fans were barking during key moments of games. All of it was buoyed by an era of low expectations.