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One of the many reasons people are uncomfortable with tanking -- to the point that its practitioners always use euphemisms like "prioritizing the future" and "taking the long view" -- is that it is seen as weak. Owners and executives will declare with great pride that they would never dream of doing it, that they couldn't put their fans through such an ordeal, that they must instead remain competitive. 

The implications are always the same: Anti-tankers are doing it the hard way, courageously trying to win as many games as they can, even if they know there is no realistic chance of winning big anytime soon. Tankers are doing it the easy way, sitting on the sidelines and protecting themselves from the criticism and consequences and usually come with losing. 

Unsurprisingly, Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti has a different view. Presti got the gig 13 years ago, when they were still the Seattle SuperSonics. The Sonics were coming off a 31-51 season and had the No. 2 pick in the draft. When Presti used the pick on Kevin Durant, franchise player Ray Allen thought about all the awesome things that he and Rashard Lewis could do with the future star by their side. Presti instead traded Allen and Lewis, and Seattle went 20-62 in its final season. 

This set up the most successful rebuild in NBA history, the fruits of which the Thunder are enjoying to this day. Presti was fortunate to walk right into an opportunity to draft one MVP, but if he hadn't traded Allen and Lewis, he wouldn't have had the chance to draft two more in successive seasons. 

(The Lewis trade also generated a trade exception, which Presti used to absorb an undesirable contract, for which Oklahoma City was compensated with two first-round picks. Presti used one of them on a Congolese project who was playing in Spain, and later traded him for a package the Thunder would flip for a disgruntled star. OKC re-signed that star and traded him a year later for a staggering collection of draft picks and the best player on the current roster.)

All of this is to say that, when Presti trades productive veterans, hoards picks and takes big swings in the draft, he knows exactly what he is doing. In an interview with The Oklahoman last month, Presti flipped the anti-tankers' argument on its head.

"We could lower our bar to make for an easier path, or ignore the recent history of team building," he said, "but that would not be creating the best conditions for decision-making."

In other words, if you want to compete for championships, to build something special and sustainable, you cannot fear short-term pain and irrelevance. The easiest thing to do in the NBA is to build a competitive, mediocre team. The tankers are the courageous ones.  

So here the Thunder are again, taking the hard road after 11 seasons of what Presti called "high performance." They don't have a Durant this time, but they have a slithery combo guard who just averaged 19 points on a playoff team, a springy lefty with point forward potential, a sturdy wing who badgered his bearded idol for a full seven-game series, a smooth point guard who gets wherever he wants and slight point-center who defies comparison, all of them 22 or younger. 

And you've seen the guys in next year's draft, haven't you?

Taking the temperature

Thunder believer: I know there's nothing more annoying than people who lionize sports executives, so forgive me: Presti just had a historic offseason. It was an avalanche of activity, a torrent of transactions, a deluge of deals. Eleven trades in total, the details of which I am not going to repeat here. All you need to know is that the Thunder are playing a different game than anyone else in the NBA, and my only concern is that they might have stumbled into a little too much talent. How can you tank if you're starting George Hill, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luguentz Dort, Darius Bazley and Al Horford? This team is going to get stops, at least until Presti trades the veterans for more stuff. 

Thunder skeptic: The one thing I will not doubt is this roster's ability to lose games. The starting unit you just mentioned is long and switchy, but they're short in the shooting department. Gilgeous-Alexander was hit-or-miss in the Houston series, and it'll take some real development for him to maintain his scoring efficiency without Chris Paul and Dennis Schroder around to take pressure off him. Presti himself has acknowledged that a bunch of randomness went in the Thunder's favor last season, and I suspect that this one will feel like a return to reality. 

Every offseason, some "smart" team gets rave reviews for blowing it up. A few months later, when they're overmatched, underwater and playing out the string, no one cares. 

Thunder believer: That's not the burn that you think it is. I have no delusions that the average basketball fan will pay any attention at all to the Thunder this season, I just know I will. 

Nitpick Gilgeous-Alexander all you want, he is clearly primed for an All-Star-caliber season. Bazley, one of the most improved players in the bubble, has a chance to grow into more of a playmaking role. Theo Maledon is more than ready to play, and, while I'm not sure if the same is true for Aleksej Pokusevski, I can't wait to find out. 

Thunder skeptic: I'll give you this: You're smart to say "All-Star-caliber" because there is no way this team is going to win enough for Gilgeous-Alexander to actually make it. It would have been even smarter to not have even gone that far, though -- try writing down the names of his competition in the West.

In general, though, I find it hard to believe anybody is sincerely interested in watching all these young dudes run around and try to figure out the NBA game. Your upbeat attitude doesn't reflect what the actual experience of watching this team will be like. Don't try to pretend you liked watching the Thunder in the early days of the Durant era.  

Thunder believer: I didn't like watching the Thunder back then. I loved it! Watching the early struggles is the whole point -- you see the potential, you see the mistakes, you see the growth and, eventually, you see a team come together. 

Thunder skeptic: I mean, you will see the struggles and mistakes. I can't imagine that anyone but the most die-hard Thunder fans will be joining you. And you definitely shouldn't count on things coming together the way they did last time, regardless of how many picks the front office has piled up.

Thunder believer: Again you're missing the point, which is that the Thunder's picks -- and the movable vets and huge trade exceptions -- are important precisely because it's so unlikely that things will turn out the way they did last time. That's the greatest run of draft picks we'll ever see, and the league has since adjusted the lottery odds to make this strategy more difficult to execute. 

But that's all big-picture stuff, and you're clearly more concerned about the immediate future. In that respect, I have wonderful news: If you liberate yourself from the idea that chasing the eighth seed is valiant, you'll come to see that the Thunder are far more compelling to watch than the teams that have chosen to do that.  

Eye on: Alexsej Pokusevski 

It is genuinely hard to believe that Pokusevski is a real player and not a figment of my imagination. He has entered our lives perfectly calibrated for the kind of basketball blogs that were popular a decade ago. His sheer weirdness, however, makes all the weirdos of that era look positively square. He's 7 feet tall, shoots 3s, moves and passes like a guard and can't finish whatsoever. He is much skinnier than Anthony Randolph was at the same age. 

I recently tweeted about starting a podcast exclusively dedicated to Pokusevski, and I'm not entirely sure whether or not I was kidding. Ninety-nine percent of the time someone like me says that we've never seen anyone like a certain a prospect, it's an exaggeration. In this case, it is not just true -- it's obvious.