On Nov. 21, 2008, in the midst of their first season in Oklahoma City, the Thunder were 1-12 after being embarrassed on national television by the New Orleans Hornets. A young roster full of raw talent was stalling.
So general manager Sam Presti made a change. He walked into P.J. Carlesimo's office and fired him, and promoted assistant Scott Brooks on the spot, informing Brooks after the team plane had taken off without Carlesimo on board.
"Our team needs direction," Brooks said after taking over. "I have clear plans to make this team play with much more energy and passion."
On Wednesday, Brooks, now head coach of Washington, will make his first return to Oklahoma City after being fired a year and a half ago.
Brooks was never really supposed to be the Thunder's coach. Presti had hired Carlesimo only a year earlier and when the decision was made to fire him and promote Brooks, the thinking was to get through the season and find a new coach. But as he did during his 11-year career, Brooks earned his job.
He quickly installed Russell Westbrook as his starting point guard, and while their record dipped to 3-29 -- a mark that remains a touchstone for players and personnel -- the response from the team was clear. The turnaround began on New Year's Eve in 2008, a 107-100 win over the Warriors.
The young Thunder finished the season winning 20 of their final 50, and were competitive almost every night. The final day of the season, Brooks was officially named head coach. The Thunder responded with a 41-point blowout win over the Clippers.
Under Brooks, the Thunder rapidly grew into an NBA power. His first full season they won 50 games and pushed the eventual champion Lakers to six games as Brooks won Coach of the Year. That kicked off a run of three conference finals in four years, including an NBA Finals appearance in 2012.
The Thunder were all about establishing a culture and an identity, and Brooks was determined to help a young roster grow. His message was always energy-centric, and not so much about Xs and Os. It was about learning how to be professional basketball players. How to practice. How to work together. How to get along in a locker room.
And most importantly, how to win.
"Scotty's my guy. He gave me a real shot to be able to do some of the things [I do] and make mistakes and he always had my back in that situation. Especially when I first got here." Thunder PG Russell Westbrook, on playing under Scott Brooks
He took pride in his ability to foster chemistry, and his Thunder teams reflected his personality. He would routinely put things into scout tapes to try to keep things loose and fun. For example: He spliced in security camera footage of practice facility manager, Johnny Schults, walking backwards while putting the cover on the exterior swimming pool. You can guess what happened.
He embraced mistakes and encouraged his young players to learn through making them -- specifically with Westbrook, who Brooks religiously defended. In many ways, the Russell Westbrook we're watching today is a result of Brooks' dedicated commitment to letting Westbrook figure it out on his own. Brooks was the original #LetWestbrookBeWestbrook apostle.
"Scotty's my guy," Westbrook said Tuesday. "He gave me a real shot to be able to do some of the things [I do] and make mistakes and he always had my back in that situation. Especially when I first got here. He was always the one who had my back through those times, and he's obviously a good coach as well."
Some saw Brooks as an enabler for Westbrook, with his unwillingness to rebuke bad shots and turnovers as a potential undoing for the Thunder. That was one of the primary whispers around Brooks during his tenure: Accountability was an issue, and he had no idea how to rein in Westbrook.
Maybe so, but the results were tangible, and impressive. Westbrook blossomed into one of the league's elites. Durant won an MVP. And despite their blemishes, the Thunder produced five remarkable seasons, with untimely injuries at the center of most of their playoff failings.
Brooks was fired on April 22, 2015, two weeks after the 2014-15 season ended, a campaign from hell that featured 55 missed games for Kevin Durant, 15 missed by Westbrook and 18 missed by Serge Ibaka. The Thunder failed to make the playoffs on the final day of the season by virtue of a tiebreaker.
When Brooks took over, his vision was for a young roster to grow, develop and improve. But what ultimately got Brooks fired is a failure to do that himself. Anyone that watched the Thunder could see the problems his teams faced. They were predictable, stale and simple. They didn't take full advantage of the talent the roster had. Brooks' solution to most issues was just to play harder.
He was resistant to embrace advanced numbers. He prioritized intangibles and chemistry over data, sticking with veterans like Derek Fisher and Kendrick Perkins, almost to the point of insanity. When the Thunder fell behind 2-1 to the Heat in the Finals, with an obvious matchup issue being a primary culprit, he refused to adjust for fear it would upset the locker room.
Instead, he said they needed to play harder. With the team ranking dead last in assists per game in 2012, and remaining near the bottom the next two seasons, the Thunder worked in the summer of 2014 to reconfigure the offense. Less isolation, more ball and player movement. Injuries derailed a lot of their well-intentioned plans, but the front office saw the issues persisting, with no improvement on the horizon.
And with the most important season of the Thunder's franchise ahead, they pulled the plug on Brooks. It was an excruciating decision for Presti, one he made with no joy, because of the respect and admiration he had for Brooks. He flew to Los Angeles to tell Brooks personally, and began a coaching search shortly after.
The talking points following Brooks' firing centered around "transition" and not reacting to an unknown future, but instead shaping it themselves. Durant would be a free agent in a year and the Thunder wanted to bring in a new coach he could learn and bond with. It seemed to work, with Durant saying during training camp it felt like a "new era" of Thunder basketball. Even with obvious improvement happening, eventually those good vibes ran out and Durant departed.
There was a certain innocence to the Brooks era. It was the best of the Thunder, the up-and-comers with all the talent and all the flaws. Fans continue to have a deep appreciation for Brooks, not just because he was at the heart of the rise of the franchise, but because of his humanity.
"You're not going to find anybody with anything bad to say about that guy," Nick Collison said. "He had a way with people."
When Brooks walks into Chesapeake Energy Arena on Wednesday, he'll face an opposing roster with only seven players he coached, and only two he coached for more than two years. It's a far different franchise than the one he was fired from, with only Westbrook and Collison remaining from the team he coached in the Finals. It'll be another glimpse of days gone by, a reminder of the purity and the promise those young Thunder had.
As Collison said simply: "We had a lot of really good years here."