As the Miami Heat captivated the basketball world by assembling their superstar trio, one team in the Western Conference was seen as their long-term challenger: the Oklahoma City Thunder. The franchise boasted a generational young core of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and the rising Sixth Man of the Year, James Harden.
When the Thunder reached the NBA Finals in 2012, it was widely believed to be the first of many appearances. Therefore, their 4-1 series loss to LeBron James’s Heat didn’t feel catastrophic. The expectation was that Harden, who was contained by Shane Battier in that series, would learn from the experience and return better.
However, a single front-office decision ensured that never happened. They traded Harden to the Houston Rockets for Kevin Martin and spare parts. In a recent episode of Netflix’s “Starting Five,” Durant and Harden reflected on the fateful move, which stemmed from a contract dispute where the two sides were merely a few million dollars apart.
Durant offered a pointed perspective, noting that he saw Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and other players congratulating Harden on getting his own team to lead in Houston—something Harden didn’t actually want. Durant believes those congratulations were born out of fear, and that the Heat stars, in particular, were “so f—- happy” … “cuz we were on their a–.”
While LeBron James, who appeared on the first season of “Starting Five,” has yet to respond, he did tell Miami reporters at the time that he predicted Harden would “blossom” outside the shadows of Durant and Westbrook.
Yet, it remains uncertain whether the Thunder would have reached the Heat’s level or even returned to the Finals in 2012-13. The Heat won 66 games that season, including a historic 27-game winning streak, with James earning the MVP award. In the NBA Finals, they were pushed to the absolute brink by the San Antonio Spurs, requiring Ray Allen’s iconic shot just to force a Game 7.
We will never know for sure if Durant was right, that the Thunder were primed to break through. But we do know one thing: they had their chance in 2012 and couldn’t capitalize. The Harden trade remains one of the NBA’s great “what-ifs,” a tantalizing alternate universe of what could have been that fans were never destined to see.