The Oklahoma City Thunder held a heavy mythos in their hands. Then, they dropped it. Up 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals, they were twice right on the precipice of knocking off the historically effective Golden State Warriors. This after eliminating the almost equally impressive regular-season juggernaut in the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs and Warriors, winners of 67 and 73 games respectively, were thought to be on a collision course—the game’s best-ever offense against its defensive equivalent; Steve Kerr up against his elder teacher Gregg Popovich—but Oklahoma City’s intoxicating few weeks of postseason bravura upended that narrative and many more, nearly stealing this NBA season away.

Non-champions are rarely remembered too long amongst fans of this league, but these Thunder look likely to stand as one of the "We’ll Always Have Paris" exceptions. Since their 98-97 Game 2 win at San Antonio on May 2nd, something of an upset after the Spurs shellacked them by 32 points in the first game, Oklahoma City has owned basketball’s most compelling month, playing a suddenly defined style that featured as much isolation heroism from Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant as it did rebounding and defensive mettle from Steven Adams, Andre Roberson and Serge Ibaka. The team’s 55-win first season under Billy Donovan, largely a discordant mess rich with silver linings and hopes for later cohesion, quickly coalesced into shorter rotations, more clear roles, and a red-hot streak that took basketball by storm.

The Thunder carried a fire that looked like fate through a convincing dismantling of the Spurs, with Durant proving himself as a two-way player guarding MVP runner-up Kawhi Leonard while Westbrook’s game reached its imperfect peak as he coughed up possessions through turnovers and oft-bad shot selection, but created many more with his magnetic, hyper-fast pull toward the ball on every play. The Spurs are an objectively old bunch, but few were ready to face just how wrinkled their mortality was as recently as the Thunder made us. By simply playing harder, faster, and meaner than San Antonio, they inspired something like pathos for Popovich and Tim Duncan’s fading dynasty, leaving them looking perplexed and bewildered about their future. More Spurs title contention now seems like a dubious frontier, at best, as long they have to keep matching up with Durant and Westbrook in the playoffs.

When the Thunder maintained that momentum to take a commanding 3-1 lead over the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals, the world was left to wonder whether Oklahoma City hadn’t transformed into something more stolid than the roller coaster of emotion and dreams deferred that their four tortured, injury-riddled seasons since a 2012 Finals appearance had made them. By putting the record-setting, futuristically long-shooting Warriors on life support with two routs in Oklahoma City—they beat them by a combined 52 points in the third and fourth match-ups—the Thunder sent shock rippling through the sport. Every painstaking piece of analysis made to detail the Warriors’ excellence was put into question, as was the direction of the game. OKC had come face-to-face with the team charged with revolutionizing the NBA, and in short order ran them into a corner with their relentless length and athleticism. They had rendered the Warriors’ fail-safe formula moot, turning their season-long preference for fast open-court play against them. Unanimous MVP Steph Curry looked pedestrian, and ragged in every inch of him from dealing with Westbrook. Draymond Green, previously the rude and swaggering spirit animal of the most dominant team in decades, became a sloppy, ineffectual and blunder-prone man with ample fear in his eyes.

That the Thunder made the Warriors dig as deep into themselves as they had to, and come from behind to continue their historic run with a much different and much grittier kind of excellence, is impressive enough to the lots of followers who doubted OKC could get this far. But for many more, their loss, however close they were to victory, is a sour disappointment. The Warriors, and Klay Thompson in particular, were sensational in their comeback win. But OKC was mere minutes away from beating them, and may have been able to withstand Thompson’s Game 6 onslaught if all they did was hold tight to the ball in a fetal position during crunch time—they gave it away six times in the final five minutes.

The Thunder were this close to bridging the gap between excitement and satisfaction that has long defined them, and reversing many inevitabilities of the stylistic path the Warriors have sent the NBA down. The growing mass of Golden State haters is common to any team who earns a monopoly on the gold in their sport, but it is also marked by a skepticism for the perfectly studious and mathematical way in which they’re taking over the game. The Thunder have seen the jewels slip through their fingers for now, but in their indeterminate fury and and gridless glee, they remain the Warriors’ most potent antidote, and the team most likely to topple their march toward greater empire, now and later.