I’ve never been the type of person to hop on hate bandwagons. OKC is different.
I’ve never hated the Chiefs as much as Reddit does. I’ve never hated the Florida Panthers as much as Reddit does. I’ve never hated the Dodgers as much as Reddit does. But OKC does something different to me that none of those other teams were able to do. They make me hate watching any game they’re involved in, to the point where it isn’t even fun anymore.
With those other teams, there are things that would make even the most ardent hater begrudgingly accept about them. Patrick Mahomes can make insane, never before seen plays. Sergei Bobrovsky is nasty and one of the best of his generation. Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn doing things we haven’t seen since Babe Ruth. There are things about those teams that fans of the sport can appreciate, and at least entertain you even if you’re rooting for them to lose.
But OKC doesn’t have that. There’s nothing to begrudgingly accept about them. There’s nothing extraordinary about what they’re doing. There’s nothing about them that’s fun to watch. At the best of times, SGA is a great guard, but he’s just that: a great guard. He’s not an alien like Wemby, or doing things we haven't seen since Wilt like Jokic. He isn’t particularly exciting or unique, and to a layman his most well known attribute is his flopping.
At first I thought “well, maybe SGA is a flopper and Dort is a dirty player, but everything else is fine”. But it’s not like that. The entire team flops. The entire team plays dirty. The entire culture is about bending the rules as much as possible, and seeing how far they can go to make the ref call a whistle. And as it turns out, they can go pretty damn far.
So yeah, I fully get now why hate bandwagons are a thing. But, at least with other hate bandwagons, it’s at least fun to hate on those teams. But OKC just makes me feel nothing but dread about what the future of basketball looks like. Having freaks we love to see like Wemby and Jokic aren’t going to be the key that wins championships. Having players that have no shame will.