You are the youngest and the most inexperienced team in the NBA – and at the end of the NBA finals

When the Oklahoma City Guard Shai Gilgeous-Aalexander spoke to ESPN for an interview in the Final of Thunder after the victory of the Thunder Conference with ESPN, some of his teammates gathered around him to support him.

It is a practice that is unique in Oklahoma City's squad that has been using the all-for-for interview strategy for a few seasons. And it is a practice that was criticized by her colleagues like Golden State Warrior's striker and four -time Champion Draymond Green.

“There is a certain seriousness that it takes to win in this league,” said Green in October in his podcast. “And there is a certain fear of conveying the teams to win. I just don't know if they give teams with all the Bromance and the game after the game.”

Whether teams are afraid of thunder or not, didn't seem to play much yet. After a win 114-88 against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday, Oklahoma City is now only three wins from the NBA final.

And the postgame “Bromance” is just a symbol of the youth and the team of the team, two characteristics that have contributed to the fact that the thunder became the best team in the league in the regular season.

“We are very unique in the way we all get along,” all-Star striker Jalen Williams told NBC News at the beginning of this season. “And I think that's what appears on the pitch. If you have 15 people who all believe in each other and everyone wants to cut them off well, they can go out there and play very freely.”

The Thunder played in front of the playoffs free of charge of 68 victories, the best percentage of the regular season since the Warriors 2016, who won 73 games. The thunder was fueled by a stingy defense, a defense assessment of 106.6, the second best brand of this decade. (So ​​far, this defense has become even more stinging, and Oklahoma City has published the best defensive efficiency of a playoff team with at least 10 games played since 2016.)

The thunder does all of this in its own way.

Conventional wisdom in the NBA are usually the best for the playoffs. The Timberwolves and the New York Knicks, two of the other conference finalists, have cadres with average experience in the upper half of the NBA.

Oklahoma City joined the lowest average age in the season and the slightest experience in every list.

The leader is Gilgeous-Alexander (26), who was appointed the most valuable player in the league on Wednesday. During his MVP campaign, he scored an average of 32.7 points, 5.0 rebounds and 6.4 assists.

In addition to SGA, important players Williams and Big Man Chet Holmgren, the second overall selection in the NBA design of 2022. The experienced security guard Alex Caruso is another important figure that arrives in the old 31 years.

The whole group is closely connected and celebrates the success of the other.

For example, we take strikers Kenrich Williams, who hardly played in each of the first two OKC off-season series, except for MOP-UP service. He played 10 minutes from the bank in the game on Tuesday and made all three attempts at the shot, including two 3 hands. When he was on the

The squad was slowly but surely built by Sam Presti, the Executive Sam Presti, who had to deal with the departures of the former MVP winners Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in the 2010s before he was able to convert the franchise into a competitor, mainly through the design and Kluge Trades.

Since his setting Daignault 2020, Oklahoma City has increased its victory from 22 to 24 to 40 to 57 every year last season. During this time, Presti added players such as Williams, Holmgren, Caruso, Center Isaiah Hartenstein and Wache Cason Wallace to a core that already included Gilgeous-Alexander and Perimeter defender Lu there.

The franchise had to endure a few meager years at the beginning of the decade, but now the young group reaches at once.

“Maybe a lot of people probably think a surprise from the outside,” said Williams about the success of the team. “But internally everyone sees in our employees and our organization how hard everyone works every day. So it is one of these things that it would be more timing than something else.”

And since the team continues to enjoy success, Daignauch encourages his players to be loyal to who they are, even if they do not act as others expect them.

“I'm certainly not at your age, I'm not nearly as cool as you and it wouldn't land well,” Daignault said at the beginning of this season about NBC News about the coach of the youngest squad of the NBA. “So I just try to be myself. I try to give you permission to be yourself. And we all work together.

“Everyone is different, all are with different backgrounds, from different families, but our paths are all colliding together and we try to make the best of it.”