The situations are similar. The Oklahoma City Thunder were about to be sold, about to be moved and dumped players and salaries and tried to build through the draft, trades and free agency.

Sound familiar?

Now, they have had some major growing pains, but look at where they are now. In Kevin Durant’s third NBA season the Thunder have an opportunity to make the playoffs in the tougher Western Conference.

It helps, of course, when you have a player of Durant’s stature and talent. You can tell he wants to be great. He’s worked at getting bigger and stronger. He’s playing better defense, rebounding the ball better and making his teammates around him better.

Just a year ago, the Thunder were 3-28 after 31 games. The 2-29 Nets are just one game worse. Today, the Thunder are 16-14 so it’s possible to turn things around quickly if you make the right decisions, draft the right players, acquire the right players.

Durant is a good starting point, but in that same 2007 Draft, the Thunder traded Ray Allen to the Celtics and received the rights to Jeff Green. They also drafted Russell Westbrook the next year, James Harden in June, signed Nenad Krstic and traded for Thabo Sefolosha.

This is not a championship team, but they continue to make good moves, find guys who play hard and want to get better and the Thunder still have salary cap room and multiple picks, including two first-rounders this year, in the next handful of drafts.

It all comes back to Durant, though. It doesn’t work or happen without him, and Kiki Vandeweghe contends it’s happened the way it has because the Thunder stuck with the plan and that was to continue to develop their young players and let them grow into good players or assets.

“You think about Kevin Durant a year ago, two years ago,” Vandeweghe said. “They played him a lot of minutes, they lost a lot of games, but they kept giving him chances, kept believing in him. They developed their core. Westbrook the same way.

“They lost a lot of games. Could they have won more games letting the veterans go, ****ng the growth of a Durant? Yeah, they probably could have won a few more games, but that’s not the path they chose.

“It took them two years to get there. We’re trying to do it within a year, but it’s a tried-and-true method (of) almost force-feeding your guys. And that’s what they did in Oklahoma, they force-fed their guys and they got good results.”

Enter Yi Jianlian. Plenty has been written about him lately because he’s had three strong games since returning from knee and lip injuries. The Nets haven’t won any of them, but 22, 17 and 29 from an aggressive Yi is much better than seeing him get six points on 2-of-9 shooting and playing passive.

Yi is getting more freedom than he had under Lawrence Frank. Many of the Nets are, but mostly Yi. Part of it is because Vandeweghe brokered the deal for Yi and believes he can be a very good NBA player. He’s going to give him the chance to get better, let him play through his mistakes.

At this point, that’s what the Nets should do. Let Yi, Brook Lopez, Courtney Lee, Chris Douglas-Roberts and even Terrence Williams play through their mistakes. For the most part Vandeweghe is. This is a lost season so they have to look ahead to the future and see what players here are a part of the future.

Under Frank last season, Yi was given chances to make mistakes, but the leash was shorter and I didn’t have a problem with it. The Nets were in the playoff race for basically four-fifths of the season.

Some believed Frank shouldn’t have played his veterans as much, but it’s always important to try to win and if you have a shot at the playoffs you do that. Frank did the right thing by playing to win.

The Nets, like the Thunder in Durant’s first two seasons, have no shot at the playoffs now. So they should keep working on getting the young players better, building for the future.

It’s a plan that could work, but it always helps when you have a Durant to carry you and a team that plays hard every game, plays with confidence, believes things will turn around and makes it happen. There’s no substitute for any of that.

***

The Nets play their final game of 2009 on Wednesday night and could have Douglas-Roberts back in the lineup when they try to snap their 10-game losing streak against the Knicks. Douglas-Roberts missed the past three games with a sprained ankle.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.).