NBA Report Cards 2015: Northwest Division is all about the Thunder

We are now about to enter Year 6 of the Oklahoma City Thunder dynasty …

Oh, sorry about that. The James Harden trade slipped my mind.

Allow me to begin again …

We are now about to enter the final season of Kevin Durant’s career in Oklahoma City, and the clock is ticking as well on Russell Westbrook’s departure. In the summer of 2017, when the salary cap is nine figures, the NBA’s best-dressed man will be taking his talents elsewhere, too. And the only thing we can say with absolute certainty is that the Kool-Aid drinking OKC media will be applauding the move. Need we remind anybody about the “procedure?”

No franchise has brought more harm upon itself (and yes, that includes the Knicks) than Clay Bennett’s outfit in the middle of nowhere. How’s that “sustainable team” thing going?

Last season was an unmitigated disaster with the exception of the enjoyment factor that Westbrook brought to the table in March and April when he became a triple-double machine and tried to singlehandedly will the Thunder into the playoffs. Oh, and the Enes Kanter trade wasn’t bad, either. We told you about that one several days before it happened.

Now that the Thunder have pinched a few extra pennies by forcing Kanter to sign an offer sheet with Portland that OKC matched, and now that Scotty Brooks has been made the fall guy for Sam Presti’s ubermistake, this is a team that has a legitimate chance, if healthy, to make Billy Donovan the second straight rookie coach to win an NBA championship. Donovan will have to learn to cope with Presti’s meddling micromanagement, but when you are throwing a team out there that includes Westbrook, Durant, Kanter, Serge Ibaka and a designated off guard who cannot score as your starting five, you have a chance.

And if you make the most of that chance and succeed, chances are Durant will stay.

If you fall short, get ready for Durant to go nuclear on the franchise for botching a chance at becoming a dynasty, all in the name of avoiding the luxury tax with the trade of Harden. (It should be noted that OKC’s owners are collectively worth billions – with a B – and are a tax team now.)

Despite missing the playoffs, the Thunder are the third choice (at 17/2) to come out of the West and win the championship. But this all assumes that Durant will be 100 percent healed from his foot injury. Word on the street is that Joel Embiid is skeptical. He has learned a thing or two about foot, ahem, procedures.

This is Edition IV of our division-by-division report cards, and our apologies for not yet having a chance to make fun of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and/or Bernie Sanders. We’ll try to get to that in the next two days.

Meantime, onto the report cards:

DENVER NUGGETS: They have cleared out Ty Lawson, thereby making Emmanual Mudiay the leading candidate to win Rookie of the Year. Dude is going to put up sick numbers, and when you are judging players on bad teams, as we will be doing, the numbers (aside from win totals) trump all else. They were quiet in free agency, but they did make one of the better under the radar moves in signing Eurostash center Nikola Jokic, who came in at No. 4 behind Dario Saric, Nemanja Bjelica and Sergio Llull in the Top 10 Eurostash players column written pre-draft by A.J. Mitnick. They also got extensions done with Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler. Now they need to decide whether Kenneth Faried was worth his extension and fess up on what the heck they were thinking when they gave Jameer Nelson three years. GRADE: C-plus

MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES: Every summer/fall I pick a team that I think will be fun to watch in the upcoming season, simply for the freak factor. These guys have Zach LaVine, who was freakish at Summer League; Andrew Wiggins, who ran away with the Rookie of the Year and will be a superfreak for years to come; and Karl Anthony-Towns, whose inside-outside game is so freakish that he was the only sure thing on draft night, going No. 1 to Glen Taylor’s team. But it doesn’t end there. I want to see Bjelica as much as I wanted to see Nikola Mirotic a year ago. I want to see if Nikola Pekovic’s head has grown any larger. I want to know why the Pacers gave up on Damjan Rudez. I want to see if Shabazz Muhammad and/or Anthony Bennett can become real NBA players. So this is my freak show team. And since they didn’t do much of anything after the draft, they get a grade befitting of a team transitioning superyoung and superEuro. GRADE: Incomplete

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER: We covered them quite a bit in the intro, so there’s not a lot left to be said. It is win or die, and if they die they are probably best off trading Russell Westbrook to the Philadelphia 76ers next summer in exchange for every stashed draft pick Sam Hinkie has tucked into his back (and front) pocket. Then Presti can start all over again, and the OKC media can rant and rave about how good of a player Josh Huestis is going to be by the time the Thunder can actually compete again, which will be sometime around 2021. By the way, I have nothing personal against Presti. He was an out-of-the-box thinker a few years back, but his control freak tendencies have not helped him, and his career as an executive has reached a make-or-break stage. Personally, I am rooting for him. I think he is a good guy. GRADE: C

PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS: Take pity on Neil Olshey. He knew he was going to lose LaMarcus Aldridge, and he knew he was going to have to dynamite the team. Did he do the best he could in swapping Nicolas Batum for Noah Vonleh and Gerald Henderson? Judge that for yourself. But first read this profile of Vonleh from Summer League before making your decision. We may have our leading Most Improved Player candidate. Then again, Meyers Leonard is going to get a lot of run, so keep him in mind, too. For now, they are Damian Lillard and 14 other guys. They need a center, and they have $27 million in cap space to use. Olshey did a good thing by signing undrafted Kansas standout Cliff Alexander. The kid was No. 2 in every Mock Draft 12 months ago. GRADE: Incomplete.

UTAH JAZZ: When you talk about under-the-radar teams, this is the team you should be focusing on. Say what you will about their discarding of the likes of Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap and Enes Kanter over the past few years, but the truth of the matter was that they were not going to win any titles with those guys making max money, so they have sort have been forced to kick the can down the road. Rudy Gobert at $1.18 million might be the best bargain in the NBA (Hassan Whiteside at $980,000 might disagree), but here is a strong young core here with reasonable salaries that will be given a couple of years to grow into something. What that something will be remains to be seen. Only summer moves of significance were bringing in Tibor Pleiss and re-signing Joe Ingles. For that, we grade generously: GRADE: B-minus.