Special enough to cheat history? We thought so, now it appears we're wrong

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander goes in for a dunk during Game 5 between the Thunder and Mavs Wednesday night at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. (Zach Beeker/OKC Thunder)

We thought they were different.

Or we really wished they would be?

Or we lied to ourselves when we knew they were.

Because they’re not.

Or so it would appear.

You can’t jump steps they say.

Perhaps in the regular season you can, and the Oklahoma City Thunder clearly have, yet here we are in the playoffs and it’s a story as old as time.

Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls lost back to back Eastern Conference finals before winning their first title.

The Bad Boy Pistons toiled four years in the playoffs before reaching the Finals, lost, and only then won the first of two crowns.

Not to mention the Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka Thunder fell in the first round, then fell in the Western Conference Finals, then reached the Finals.

Historically speaking, it’s been a quick rise and, yet if it takes this Thunder core another two years to win the Western Conference we’ll feel like it’s overdue … because we thought they were different.

OKC appeared back where it needed to be entering Wednesday night’s Game 5 inside Paycom Center. 

Two nights earlier, at American Airlines Center in Dallas, the Thunder played their third straight rotten game for the vast majority of the game, only to catch lightning in a bottle over the contest’s final five minutes, turning back the Mavericks by four points, stealing victory, evening the series 2-2.

Home court had been restored.

Certainly they’d again resemble the team we watched play all season, that won that won 57 games, shocking the world by earning the West’s No. 1 seed.

But they didn’t.

Not even close.

Splat, thy name is Thunder.

---

---