City Oilers are in an unfamiliar place. For the first time in over a decade, the Oilers lost a playoff series, and it is one that will hurt for a while. The reason? Well, that’s a story for another day.
The Oilers seemed invincible once, but now, far from it. Nobody saw this coming three years ago when, even at their worst, they limped and still won the National Basketball League title. But what life teaches us, over and over again, is that pride comes before the fall.
Without that implosion of the team last year which led to the exit of three senior players from the club, probably there would be no analogies to fumble through, but here we are. The City Oilers have been thoroughly eviscerated, not just on social media but in mainstream media.
There can be no keener revelation of a club’s soul than the way in which it treats its players. When the club chooses exploitation over protection, it is nothing short of abhorrent.
All City Oilers did was win, at all costs, and that’s a fact written in stone, receipts for years. You may not have to give them credit for all the championships but you certainly have to give them respect for being the standard and staying at the top of the pile for a decade. That’s the mark the Oilers have left on the league following that glorious run, the one that seemingly came to an end early last month following the 4-2 defeat to the Nam Blazers.
Throughout the playoff finals, you could see vestiges of what the City Oilers have been. Ben Komakech hitting tough, contested but momentum-turning triples, Fayed Baale catching and shooting decisively with his defender fighting through screens, and Titus Lual sagging at the top of the mountain for wide open treys as the defense reacts to a drive. But something was missing, which had been the centre of their success: sharing the ball selflessly.
The Nam Blazers did everything they could to gum up the Oilers’ ball movement offense and made sure the rock ended up in the sticky hands of Moses Maker, cutting off the possibility of another offensive wizardry from Kurt Weigscheider or Chad Bowie.
Everything good must come to an end, and it appears that the City Oilers’ dynasty, as we know it, could be over. And that, in a way, gives some local basketball fans ruinenlust.
Where did it go wrong?
The Oilers, who have been the best team at assembling players, could have fallen apart through a string of subtle roster mistakes. It should be tough when you lose the core of your unit in the middle of the season but the success against a seemingly strong KIU Titans last year, in a way, made the Oilers overconfident in their abilities as reflected in their offseason signings.
The off-season business saw them sign forwards Edgar Munaba, Joseph Chuma, Bolton Rujumba and Emmanuel Okumu to replace Tonny Drileba, Jimmy Enabu and James Okello—talk of downgrades. But then there was another problem… Ivan Muhwezi had a contractual dispute with the club and refused to play the entire first half of the season before joining the trio at Nam Blazers.
Head coach Andrew Tendo had to create a new core for the side without MVP Titus Lual, who was nursing a persistent knee injury. At his disposal were star guard Fayed Baale, Benjamin Kawumi, Allawi Ssenkubuge, Malual Dier, and Rogers Dauna from last season and the four new boys. Without sounding needlessly complicated, that roster looked like a setup for the coach to fail, and he obliged with a 5-6 first round.
Oilers went out of their way and made three midseason signings but only Maker played and helped the side sneak into the playoffs through a better head-to-head, their worst placing since their debut season, when they entered the playoffs as a fifth seed.
The Oilers swept JT Jaguars in the first round, but the two wins were not smooth, with Game 2 coming down to a missed lay-up by George Agasi. Certainly, that anaemic performance showed City Oilers’ vast and storied history was under threat.
The five-game second-round series against Sommet exposed another deficiency in Oilers’ game: defence. To their credit, the Oilers slowed down the pace of the decisive Game 5, which allowed them to recover and set a platform for the finals.
Two games into the finals, title number eleven appeared to be on the horizon, only for Blazers to win the series-turning Game 3.
What next?
It is clear that the City Oilers need a new setting. It’s a bleak state of affairs, and that’s the Oilers’ reality for the time being.
Conventional wisdom dictates that the ten-time champions are in some sort of purgatory but that assessment is arguably reductive.
Embracing a rebuild is uncommon and difficult to do, but do the Oilers have any other choice with the amount of dead wood, which we all know can not be removed by voluntary redundancy?