After a decade of heartbreak, the Oklahoma City Thunder climbed the mountain in 2025. Some said the path was tainted, but as the Thunder dominate again, it’s starting to look like that title was just the beginning.
Last season, before the playoffs, I did something that, to that point in my journalistic career, I had been uncomfortable doing: I declared.
“Injuries are the only way I see this Thunder team not winning a championship at some point along the line,” I wrote in March. “I don’t know if it’s this year or next, but the combination of aggressiveness from the organization, depth, chemistry and future assets makes for a combination that mixes perfectly for a long-standing contender.”
“… Maybe this will be a jinx. An overzealous declaration of a future championship for a team that has yet to make it out of the second round of the playoffs. But I’d rather bet big on a team that checks all the boxes than ignore the signals out of a fear of being wrong.”
I ended up being right.
Last year’s team won the NBA Championship, completing a 17-year, up-and-down journey to the top of the mountain for a franchise that had experienced as much heartbreak as any in the NBA.
It’s an irrevokable achievement from a team that did it the right way. OKC built itself through shrewd trade acquisitions in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Kenrich Williams and historically impossible drafting ability with hits such as Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace in the lottery and Aaron Wiggins, Ajay Mitchell and Jaylin Williams in the second round. Then, there’s the under-the-radar free agent signings of Isaiah Joe and Lu Dort.
Everything OKC has done, it’s done ethically. It’s done it in a way that most fans, on its surface, would respect and appreciate.
Despite that fact, last season’s title has a bit of a smell to it.
OKC is far from the first team to benefit from an injury in the finals. Look at Golden State in 2015 or Toronto in 2019, or god forbid, the dozens of examples that didn’t happen in the finals that aided a team in its journey.
That said, admittedly, something about the way it happened to Tyrese Haliburton felt different.
In reality, it wasn’t.
Should Kevin Durant not go down in 2019, Golden State was a near lock to repeat. Even without Durant, they were still well within reach of another title before Klay Thompson also got hurt in that series.
But the imagery of Haliburton, the way ESPN showed the replay what felt like 179 times and the emotion on his face, along with the historic run he had been on to get there, and the fact it happened in a Game 7. Something about it was truly different, and unfairly to them, the 2025 Thunder will always be somewhat tainted by that moment. It was the rare, truly soulless Game 7.
Most times, one championship cements a team in history in a truly memorable way. And OKC’s 2025 championship will always be memorable. But like it or not, to most fans, the part that will be remembered won’t be the shedding of a decade of pain for a small-market team that had everything go against it until one trade in 2019; it’ll be a crushing injury to a player on an all-time run.
That is, unless OKC can retroactively make the 2025 season something else. Something even more special.
The start of a dynasty.
That word is thrown around loosely in the NBA. First, it was Denver that was going to be a dynasty after winning the title in 2023. Well, the Nuggets haven’t made it back to the conference finals since. Then, it was Boston. Who can stop a team with a 26-year-old superstar, a cast of all-star teammates and an owner willing to spend whatever it takes? Well, an Achilles injury to the superstar, the sale of the team, and an unforeseen overhaul of the NBA’s cap rules will.
The point is, how many one-time champs have been declared the next dynasty?
But, just like its 2025 title, but in the opposite way, this Oklahoma City Thunder team is just different.
To start the season, the reigning champs have been on a tear. What many expected to be a championship hangover has felt more like a championship energy drink. Everything OKC did last season, it is doing better this season, all while missing its second-best player, who just so happens to be one of the 15 best players in the world.
Last season, OKC had the second-best net rating of all time, trailing only the infamous ’96 Bulls. This season, the Thunder have a net rating of 15.2 through 12 games, which is nearly two full points clear of what some consider to be the most dominant team in NBA history.
SGA, yes, the SGA that won MVP, Finals MVP, the NBA Scoring Title, Western Conference Finals MVP and the ESPY’s Best Male Athlete, is somehow playing even better than he did last season.
Through 12 games, the reigning MVP has sat out six fourth quarters, is averaging 32.8 points per game (.1 more than last season), nearly a turnover less per game, fewer shot attempts, a higher free throw percentage and is shooting nearly 60% from inside the arc for the second straight season.
Mitchell has turned into a stud off the bench, filling the only glaring need left on OKC’s roster, a third ball-handler, in resounding fashion.
Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein both look better, both individually and as a duo. Jalen Williams hasn’t dribbled a ball in an NBA game this season. Holmgren, Dort, Caruso, Kenrich Williams and Nikola Topic have all missed multiple games this season. None of it seems to matter. This squad doesn’t care who is or isn’t playing, they will show up, they will dominate and they’ll likely be sitting their superstar player on the bench in the fourth quarter.
Those who follow the league on a game-by-game basis have known this.
SGA is doing all he can to repeat as MVP and those around him are all taking leaps, all while an All-NBA, 40-point finals scorer in Williams is recovering from a serious wrist injury that he played through during last season’s playoffs.
And all of those things became clear to the world, minus those with YouTube TV, on ESPN last night.
Because of a playoff series that had an even scoring differential, in which Gilgeous-Alexander outplayed him and his team escaped by the skin of its teeth against an OKC team that started Josh Giddey and didn’t have Hartenstein, Luka Doncic has been given a rep as an OKC kryptonite of sorts. The one bugaboo for a team with no glaring weaknesses.
Whether he’s earned that particular moniker or not is one thing, but it’s clear that Doncic is one of the best in the world, and he came into Wednesday’s game in OKC on an all-time offensive heater, averaging more than 40 points and posing his well-known threat as a passer and rebounder.
Dort, OKC’s defensive superstar and the target of their online detractors, was out, so his very physical, what some consider to be over-the-line, style of defense wasn’t a viable excuse on this given night.
Well, it didn’t matter.
Doncic scored only 19 points while being guarded primarily by Wallace, marking yet another meeting between the NBA’s two premier guards in which Gilgeous-Alexander clearly outduelled Doncic. Gilgeous-Alexander was in his typical routine, scoring 30 points on 10-of-18 shooting, hitting 8-of-9 free throws and dishing out nine assists and providing a spark on defense with two steals.
OKC was up by 30 at halftime.
The game was over as quickly as it began, and it put on full display what many that exist on the deep, dark corners of the anti-OKC sections of the internet have ignored. This isn’t the same team that Doncic narrowly escaped in the second round two seasons ago. This isn’t the same SGA. It’s not the same Chet Holmgren or supporting cast of characters. And at this point in their careers, Jalen Williams and LeBron are within the same tier of stars. James is still an all-time offensive creator who has a gravity, on and off the court, that few have ever matched. But Williams is one of the best handful of defenders in the league and he’s a budding offensive star in his own right.
To be clear, as of now, James is the better player, but the gap between the two isn’t so significant that one fanbase can say their absence is far more impactful than the others’.
It was the statement OKC needed to make to the doubters that remained.
Some will always believe that the 2025 NBA Championship was won and lost by the injury to Haliburton. Some will always believe that the magic of him and his Pacers team was too great for any team, no matter how historically dominant, to overcome.
Some will never be convinced that that particular OKC team was the first in a line of multiple potential championships; that’s the nature of hate. It’s not rational. Facts don’t quell it; they only make it stronger. And in sports, to be hated, you have to be special.
Nobody really hates the Cleveland Browns, or the Brooklyn Nets, or the San Diego Padres, because why would you, barring they’re a regional rival. But people hate the Lakers, or the Kansas City Chiefs, or the New York Yankees.
And why is that?
Big market? Maybe, in some cases. But in reality, nothing drives hate like winning, and in the case of the Oklahoma City Thunder, 2025 may have just been the beginning.
As I said earlier in this piece, I’m not one for declarations in sports. It feels like tempting fate. Giving the middle finger to the sports gods and saying ‘Oh yeah? Watch this.’ But this OKC squad is different, and the NBA, historically, is a league of dynasties.
The youth, the assets, the contracts of role players and the lack of cap escalators in the contracts of Holmgren and Williams. For dynasties to begin, luck has to be involved. The stars have to align unnaturally, and for OKC, that’s what it feels like is happening in this moment.
Now, of course, an injury, a scandal, or a trade request can render this entire piece mute in one moment, but something about this franchise, right now, feels special, right?
Last March, I went against my better instinct and wrote from the heart. I wrote what my truest thoughts were, untainted by superstition or fear, and I was right. Now, I double down, and I say the same thing I said then.
“I’d rather bet big on a team that checks all the boxes than ignore the signals out of a fear of being wrong.”
