The famous talk show actor Cam has a passage in his performance:
What are the specialties of Xinjiang? Fruit, lamb kebabs, Gulinaza.
What are the specialties of Italy? The Godfather, The Godfather 2, The Godfather 3
So what do we think of when we mention Seattle? "Beijing Meets Seattle", Starbucks, Supersonic?
If in the past, this supersonic speed could represent an airplane or an NBA team. But after 2007, when people mention supersonic speeds, they should not actively think of the team that dominates the yellow and green, because in 2007, Oklahoma businessman Clay Bennett bought the Seattle Supersonics for $350 million from former Starbucks president Howard Schultz, and Klay Bennett relocated the team to Oklahoma after his lease with Key Arena expired in 2008.
Due to the disputes between the two sides during this relocation process, the history of supersonic speed eventually remained in Seattle, and the new army Thunder was born in Russia.
Compared to Joe Boss's Bobcat choice deck Charlotte Hornet history, the Thunder moved from a bustling West Coast city to a small mid-central town, choosing to take the wolf route, starting with a knife, all equipped to pick up, self-reliant, and self-made.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > say that the Russian city is small, how small is it? </h1>
Sports are sometimes not so "pure", it is delusional to generate electricity with love, running a professional team is essentially a commercial activity, and you cannot be isolated from the market.
Therefore, the operation of professional teams also depends on the historical process of urban development, and the team needs to rely on fans to enter the market to consume is the simplest supply and demand relationship.
The city of Russia has chosen a difficult path, why? Because they abandoned the big city on the west coast and moved to the small town of Russia, and the russian city town did not have a prosperous economic foundation to support the development ceiling of thunder.
Russia used to rely on oil resources to enrich the side, but then gradually declined with the decline in oil demand. The over-reliance of the city's economic lifeblood on a single industry is actually a very poisonous thing, which is equivalent to smashing the entire team's salary on one player. Because when the pillar industry goes downhill, and the city has no other industry to make up for it, the employment will inevitably decrease; and economic growth depends on the increase of work output, which is equivalent to increasing the number of jobs to continuously generate value, but Russia has been in a retrograde state since modern times.
The lack of rich industrial resources in Russia itself is also one of the reasons for economic decline. Although the Russian city built by the enclosure movement has the second largest urban land area in the United States, the corresponding industrial resources are very limited: agriculture, animal husbandry, energy industry... The Russian city in the Great Plains of the Central and Southern Regions is sparsely populated, dominated by a self-sufficient model of farmers, lacking foreign exchanges and naturally lacking economic activities.
Although the West Coast cities also experienced the rise and fall of the gold rush, these cities did not become desolate due to the fading of the gold rush, and the gold rush brought cultural exchanges on the East Coast, leaving a talent resource for the rise of the city. Los Angeles, with its high-quality tourism resources, saw a booming entertainment industry after World War II, generating a large amount of economic activity. San Francisco has used the wave of silicon valley technology to inject funds and drivers into the rise of the city.
The Russian cities in the central region have not accumulated the basis for foreign trade since ancient times, coupled with the crackdown on racial discrimination incidents, naturally lack of talents and capital, and can only concentrate on traditional animal husbandry. Although there are oil fields in Russia, but the oil fields in Russia do not have special competitiveness, with the process of globalization, there is no advantage in the labor costs of oil exploitation in Russia, the industry is down, the jobs are reduced, and the economy is declining.
Now there are 640,000 people in Russia, the city population ranks 27th in the United States, if it is calculated by metropolitan area, the Russian city life circle of 1.4 million people can only rank 51st in the United States.
But the small Russian city is not as small as San Francisco, with a per capita GDP of only $55,000 in 2018, ranking fifth from the bottom among 30 NBA teams. The median annual household income in Russia city is $58,000, San Francisco is as high as $118,000, twice that of Russia city, and Seattle is also $89,000.
In terms of the affluence of urban residents, It is clear that Russian cities are a few levels behind most cities with NBA teams. The basis of each professional team is the local market, and the professional teams in small cities naturally have natural shortcomings in operation.
The russian city belongs to the economic weakness caused by the backwardness of the historical process, and it continues to this day. Although there are local policies to stimulate the economy, trying to develop tourism, manufacturing... But the development process is difficult and takes time, and if there is no disruptive technological innovation, it is difficult to make qualitative changes in the urban economy in the short term. (Only 1.2 percent of jobs are created through high tech in Russia, 6.4 percent in Seattle and 12.4 percent in San Francisco.)
Job growth in Russia was regressive in 2016, reaching +2.2% in 2018, but only ranking 126th. That is to say, the size of the Thunder's ball market will not have an essential breakthrough in the short term.
(And the energy sector in Russia has recently been hit hard by falling oil prices, with shares of All Sapik Energy, one of the largest local companies in Russia, already falling by more than 90 percent in 2020, with no slag left))
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > small team counterattack, how did the Thunder do it? </h1>
Since the size of the football market in Russia due to the backwardness of the "historical process" has led to a relatively small size, the Thunder can only rely on "personal efforts" to make up for the operation of the team.
I believe that everyone is familiar with the story of how Presti has a wonderful pen and flowers in the position of general manager of the Thunder, and has mentioned a key point in the development of the small team in the Eagles and Thunder chapters before - if there is no good management, then everything is in vain.
Although excellent management cannot make up for the natural shortcomings in the size of the ball market, it is possible to reach a considerable lower limit through hard work. If there is no rich second-generation background such as the Knicks and lakers, then you can only work hard to run a well-off.
Similar to a phrase that fans always hang on their lips, talent determines the upper limit, and effort determines the lower limit. Yanzu became bald and still Yanzu.
The annual draft is similar to the college entrance examination, a small team trying to turn over the salted fish and break the class solidification of a thin slit. After the change of hands, the Thunder is also like a hard-working student in the cold window, adding value to themselves through the path of drafting relative to fairness. Durant was selected in 2007, Westbrook and Ibaka in 2008, Harden in 2009, Reggie Jackson in 2011... Building a set of championship lineups through the draft is equivalent to being admitted to Tsinghua Peking University.
In the year the Thunder reached the Finals, 5 of the 8 main rotation members of the playoffs were their own family members cultivated by the Thunder himself, and the strongest four core players were only Durant who did not hold a rookie contract.
In my limited impression, I really can't find a team with stronger draft ability than the Thunder of this period. It can be said that the Thunder of the four youngsters have played the team with the draft to the extreme.
Since the 09/10 season when the Thunder first entered the playoffs, the Thunder began to achieve at least 20 million profits per year, and the 12/13 season after reaching the Finals reached a peak of 33.3 million, with an average annual profit of 27 million in 6 years.
Before the new broadcast agreement was signed, the annual profit of 27 million was not a small amount for small teams. Take the small team textbook Spurs and Thunder to make a comparison: during the 09/10 to 14/15 seasons, the Spurs won 50 in 3 seasons, 60 wins in 3 seasons, reached the Finals twice, and won the championship once. In the 13/14 season when the Revenge Heat won the championship, the Spurs made an annual profit of $40.9 million, but the Spurs' average profit in these 6 years was 22.7 million, which was not as good as the Thunder.
The reason why the Thunder can become a clear stream in the small team is inseparable from the efforts of the staff behind the scenes. The Oklahoma's reporter, Maddie Lee, reported a good example of this:
Losing draft Lugent-Dort has averaged 22 minutes per game for the Thunder, who is no. 5 in the West this season, and he is the player who spent a lot of time through the Thunder Scouting Team.
According to Presti's account, finding Dort is not a simple matter, first he and other management personnel initially inspect Dolt, after the initial determination that he has potential, and then through the full-time scout Brandon Miller to follow the player on the ground, do more analytical work, and Presti said that Brandon Miller has to spend hundreds of hours of work behind this.
It took hundreds of hours to tap into a rotational fringe player, and the Thunder's efforts to run the team were reflected.
The Thunder have been able to maintain good operating conditions since relocating to Russia City, and the efforts of the team staff are only part of it, after all, the team staff is also the personal will of the boss, and whether the team owner has a good vision and sufficient determination is also the key. The reason why Presti can have enough room to play with the Thunder, and the reason why the Thunder can become a regular player in the playoffs, is also related to the fact that the board is not stingy with investment.
Although we always say that the Thunder are small teams, they have a lot of luxury taxes to pay, and even the only team in the league in the 18/19 season that is still losing money after the labor distribution, the core reason is that their players' salaries are too much.
Compared with many small team owners who regard paying luxury taxes as the bottom line, the Thunder board is obviously much more generous, and the luxury taxes paid by the Thunder are not bamboo baskets, and these real money and silver investments make the Thunder a regular in the playoffs. Being able to maintain playoff qualification all year round can naturally gain the support of fans and the favor of local businesses, not to mention that Oklahoma only has a high-level professional team, the Thunder.
(People from nearby Kansas also go to Russia to watch football, and the other author of this article used to drive to Russia city in Missouri because there were no professional teams around...) ）
The Thunder's two main sponsors — Chesapeake Energy and the LOVE Auto Store (which is the trademark on the Thunder jersey) — are the two largest companies in the area. In the 18/19 season, the average Thunder fan spent 91 US dollars for the team, the third most in the league, and the loyalty of fans can be imagined.
In general, the Thunder's "counterattack" is the same as the spurs of its predecessors, good operational ability is crucial, and the value of this intangible asset will be magnified especially in the small ball market, and the self-made Thunder is the best example.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > small teams still can't escape "fatalism"? </h1>
There is no doubt that the progress of the Thunder so far can be written into the textbook of small team development. But did they really do the counterattack?
I don't think the Thunder have escaped the natural cycle of small team development for the time being, three important landmark events: Harden's departure, Durant's departure, Paul George's voluntary application for a trade... It's all about revealing the nature of the Thunder's small team, even though they've only missed the playoffs once since the 09/10 season.
Harden's departure is because the team needs to control costs, and the Thunder need to consider the cost-effectiveness of input and output, and cannot casually pay a fine of over $100 million in order to form the Galacticos like the Brooklyn Nets.
Although the subsequent Thunder learned their lessons from the mistake of letting harden go, and paid them extremely generously when they renewed their contracts with Westbrook and Paul George, the natural shortcomings of the small team caused them to ultimately fail to retain these good players.
Durant is like this, Paul George's departure is the most representative, the front foot just signed a fat contract to say that he wants to play basketball with Westbrook, and the back foot said to go back to Los Angeles to play for his hometown. The Thunder could not restrain and punish Paul George's forced default, and could only stop the loss as soon as possible, and even needed to make a compromise with the "innocent" city hero Westbrook.
The cause of the fatalism of small teams is also due to this: the continuous loss of assets of high-quality players will only damage the team, but they cannot retain good players, and they cannot effectively supplement the free agent market, and can only rely on long-term draft reconstruction to form a cycle cycle.
In the end, the Russian City Thunder became Marquez's Macondo.
Presti said after trading Paul George that the market is indeed unfair to small teams, which is undeniable. Even the Spurs, which have achieved the ultimate, have begun to decline, which is an unavoidable problem for small teams, and if they want to break the cycle cycle, in the end, they still have to rely on the historical process.
For example, the only team that has broken the cycle cycle in recent years - the Warriors - they have made personal efforts like the Thunder, building a lineup of 5 years and 3 crowns through extremely accurate draft vision and correct operation again and again, while the background of the prosperity of the Bay Area has allowed the Warriors to have enough capital injection to support the ceiling of the team.
However, Oklahoma is not the Bay Area, the city does not have the same economic environment as San Francisco, and the Thunder is unlikely to relocate in the short term. Then, unless there is a subversive industrial revolution in Russia in the short term, bringing a steady stream of hot money, then the cycle cycle of the Thunder small team will continue.
Because they can't be as extravagant as the Warriors to the point of falling bad with a top-salary contract, george has to go with the trade Willshao, Paul played so well and is still on the shelves.
The Thunder fell into Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the Warriors finished a copy of Kafka by the Sea.
After the sweet moment of the Thunder's four teenagers earning 27 million passed, the Thunder, who increased their investment in reinforcements in the 15/16 season, immediately entered a state of loss, and this season the Thunder also played the Western Conference Finals and the Warriors to grab seven.
Although the 16/17 season due to the signing of the new broadcast contract masked the impact of Durant's departure, the Thunder made 67 million yuan, but with the increase of subsequent investment, the fatigue of the Thunder's revenue was gradually revealed, they only had a profit of 10 million in the 17/18 season, and in the 18/19 season, because of Paul George's salary extension, the Thunder became the only team in the league to lose money.
Although the Thunder in the past 10 years has an average profit margin of 13%, the Thunder has lost 3 years in the past 4 years, and the Thunder have enough courage to continue to lose? This scale is believed to be clear to everyone.
As Howard Max put it: "A lot of pre-emptive defaults are ultimately unavoidable, and they will still come, just a little later, but the company is more leveraged and falls worse at this time." ”
It's just that the Thunder deleveraging is clever, avoiding the "James lever" like the Cavaliers and directly causing the team to collapse.
It is true that in the short term, it is difficult for the Thunder to complete the transformation from a small team to a big club like the Warriors, but it is not delusional to maintain the current operating state and become a Western Powerhouse. But fans need to be patient about this, and the Thunder also need to keep the balance of payments and accumulate capital to make a comeback. Excellent operational capabilities are only auxiliaries, which can only shorten the cycle time of the cycle and accelerate the arrival of the next upward cycle, unlike the giants who can complete the reconstruction in an instant by signing a star.
The self-made Thunder have done better than most teams, but if the Thunder have the capital of a big city, then they may be the first "Warriors", and it is a pity to look back at the Thunder that played the Finals but did birds and beasts.