10 best teams that fell short of winning NBA title

2. 2012-13 Oklahoma City Thunder

So how does a team that just did reach the 60-win mark make it so high on this list? The young Oklahoma City Thunder in 2012-13 were extremely good, even with the decision to trade Sixth Man of the Year James Harden to build around young stars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Durant was second in the league in scoring at 28.1 points per game and entered the prestigious 50/40/90 club with a shooting slash of .539/.416/.905 (the best in the NBA), while Westbrook finished sixth in scoring (23.2 points a night), seventh in assists (7.4 a game) and ninth in steals (1.8 nightly).

Throw in Serge Ibaka leading the NBA with 3.0 blocks per game and the Thunder — who made a run to the NBA Finals the previous season — rolled to the best record in the Western Conference.

But against the eighth-seeded Houston Rockets, disaster struck when Patrick Beverley cracked knees with Westbrook during a play that continues to breed bad blood between the two guards. The Thunder won the first two games of the series, but Westbrook’s torn meniscus would sideline him for the remainder of the playoffs.

Oklahoma City took a 3-0 lead in the series before Houston bounced back with back-to-back wins. The Thunder finally finished off the Rockets on the road in Game 6 and opened the Western Conference Semifinals with a 93-91 win over the Memphis Grizzlies.

But Memphis took over from there, grinding out wins by six, six, six and four points to reach its first-ever conference finals.

Oklahoma City led the NBA with a plus-9.8 net rating, more than a point per 100 possessions better than the Miami Heat, who won a league-best 66 games. The Thunder led the NBA with a 112.4 offensive rating and ranked fourth in the league with a 102.6 defensive rating.

Save for a controversial collision, the Thunder’s 2012-13 campaign might have been epic. Or at least given us another Durant-LeBron James Finals battle.