Browsing: Thunder

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  David PurdumOct 21, 2025, 09:40 AM ET

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  • Joined ESPN in 2014
  • Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008

The Oklahoma City Thunder were underdogs in only three games last season en route to winning the franchise’s first NBA championship.

Oddsmakers are expecting a similar campaign this season.

The Thunder, who tip off their title defense Tuesday against the Houston Rockets, are commanding favorites to win another championship, listed at 2-1 at ESPN BET. Those are the shortest title odds entering a season since the powerhouse Golden State Warriors in 2017-18.

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“They’re head and shoulders above [everyone], and they’ll be favored in just about every game, unless there’s something unforeseen,” Jeff Sherman, a veteran NBA oddsmaker for the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas, said of the Thunder.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, at +650, have the second-shortest odds behind the Thunder. The Denver Nuggets (+650) are the only other team with title odds shorter than +1000.

The New York Knicks are +1000, followed by the Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers, who are each +1500.

While Oklahoma City is the overwhelming favorite, the Thunder’s short odds have bettors looking elsewhere.

At ESPN BET, nearly 50% of the money that had been bet on the odds to win the NBA title was on the Nuggets. Denver also had attracted the most bets and most money to win the title at BetMGM. The Nuggets’ title odds moved from around 15-1 down to +650 this offseason, as the team retooled around Nikola Jokic.

Jokic is the betting favorite to win MVP and is listed +215 at ESPN BET, followed by Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at +250. The Lakers’ Luka Doncic is next at +440.

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After the arduous, methodical process of building their roster, the Oklahoma City Thunder finally broke through last season and won their first NBA championship since moving from Seattle in 2008. Although OKC was never truly an underdog, having entered the 2024-25 campaign with the second-best title odds at +675, it’s a different story heading into the 2025-26 season.

This year, the Thunder are +200 to win the NBA Finals, far outpacing the Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets in second place at +650, according to ESPN BET odds. Oklahoma City is the favorite across the sportsbook marketplace, but specific odds vary, getting as long as +250.

Either way, it’s among the shortest odds for a preseason title favorite in the past decade. Since 2014, discounting an unprecedented run that saw the Golden State Warriors as odds-on preseason favorites for three seasons from 2016 through 2018, only the 2021-22 Brooklyn Nets (+240) had comparable odds to those of the Thunder this season, per data from SportsOddsHistory.com.

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The optimism around OKC centers not only on its deep, talented roster remaining almost completely together, but also that most of the players are still young and have room to progress.

“The Thunder had their breakthrough to win a championship at the start of their window and are not laden with veterans or players in contract years,” ESPN BET senior director Adrian Horton said over email. “Given that, there is a reasonable expectation that they can continue to improve year-over-year and build around an intact group of stars that aren’t aging out or hitting free agency anytime soon.”

That said, not every bookmaker is as high on the Thunder. Caesars Sportsbook lead pro basketball trader David Lieberman is among the bookmakers slightly lengthening Oklahoma City, citing a strong Western Conference posing obstacles for the reigning champions.

“I think for as dominant and as prohibitive favorites as they were throughout the season, it was a little surprising to see them not dominate or struggle a few times in the playoffs,” Lieberman told ESPN. “So I think while they deserve to be obviously the favorites again and they could improve with the young core that they have, I think there’s a few teams in the West that improved as well.”

The biggest challengers in the minds of bettors and bookmakers alike are the Denver Nuggets, who are aiming to win a second title with perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokic. Denver is the most backed team by tickets at BetMGM and by handle at ESPN BET, attracting nearly half of all money at the latter. DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello also notes that the Nuggets have taken “some of the most money” among the teams in the favorites tier.

Per usual, the ever-popular Los Angeles Lakers (+1500) are a top-three team by ticket volume at the major books, with added excitement this season for Luka Doncic’s first full campaign with the team. Other top title attractions from the West include the Houston Rockets (+1400), Golden State Warriors (+2200) and Dallas Mavericks (+3300).

Lieberman emphasizes that the longer lines for some of these teams are a result of the brawl that is sure to ensue in the West side of the playoff bracket.

“The odds kind of reflect the fact that it’s tougher to make it to the Finals in the West, but the team that gets there probably will be a pretty sizable favorite over whoever makes it from the East.”

East is least

The Knicks turn to Mike Brown, a two-time NBA Coach of the Year. Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

The West being stronger than the East isn’t exactly a new narrative in the NBA, but the chasm between the two conferences could be even more pronounced for 2025-26. Only three of the top 10 favorites — the Cavaliers (+650), New York Knicks (+1000) and Orlando Magic (+1800) — for this season’s title come from the Eastern Conference.

ESPN BET’s Horton says that the Boston Celtics, who were title favorites entering last season, were “overwhelming favorites” to win the East in previous seasons “because they weren’t really going to be challenged until the conference finals.” This season, as Jayson Tatum continues to recover from a torn Achilles and the team undergoes a soft rebuild, the Celtics are +3000 for the title, according to ESPN BET odds.

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Add in a major injury to Tyrese Haliburton hampering the defending conference champion Indiana Pacers (+8000) and a lack of faith in the previously reliable Philadelphia 76ers (+3300), and there suddenly isn’t a readily viable candidate to win the title for the East in the eyes of oddsmakers.

“Almost any East team is probably going to be a pretty big long shot against whoever comes out of the West,” Lieberman said. “Just on paper, I think there’s five, six teams out West who might be favored over the best team in the East in a Finals series. And that kind of shows itself in the futures market.”

Bettors generally agree with the books on this sentiment. At ESPN BET, the Cavs and Knicks, the two most-backed East teams, have just the seventh- and eighth-most handle, respectively, to win the title. DraftKings’ Avello notes some long-shot action on the 76ers and Toronto Raptors (150-1), but otherwise notes more overwhelming title attention on the West.

Caesars’ Lieberman suggests that bettors could instead look for a long shot to win the conference, like Indiana did last season. This season, that could be the Detroit Pistons (+1100 for the East), who have the most bets at BetMGM and the second-most handle at ESPN BET.

But the overwhelming feeling is that the West will likely be the conference favored to win it all again. ESPN BET has a special market on which conference will win the championship, and the West is -250 to the East’s +210.

Planting the Flagg

Expectations are sky high for Dallas rookie Cooper Flagg. Tim Heitman/NBAE via Getty Images

The NBA has had many impactful rookies enter the league in recent seasons, but by the odds, the expectations might not be any higher than they are for Dallas’ Cooper Flagg.

The 2025 top draft pick is the consensus odds-on favorite to win Rookie of the Year this season, sporting -225 odds at ESPN BET. Although the odds vary across the marketplace to some extent, Flagg could be the shortest preseason ROY favorite since at least 2006, per data from SportsOddsHistory.com. Victor Wembanyama was -145 in 2023-24 and Kevin Durant was -200 in 2007-08 before each eventually won the award.

“These awards are driven by narrative as much as they are stats, and the expectation is that Flagg will have plenty of both. Flagg is already regarded as a star coming out of Duke and is certainly one of the biggest stories coming into this season,” Horton said. “Add in his expected role on a playoff-caliber team, and he’s the clear favorite for the award until we start to see otherwise.”

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“It’s kind of rare for a first overall, generational talent to land in such a positive spot like a good team; you can just sort of step in and not have too much pressure to be the guy right away,” Lieberman said. “I think that’s, to me, the difference between this situation and most No. 1 overall picks that typically go to teams that are just awful.”

ESPN BET has a Cooper Flagg vs. The Field market, and the latter is +185. The only potential challengers who have emerged are the Utah Jazz’s Ace Bailey and the Washington Wizard’s Tre Johnson, whose odds vary across the major sportsbooks, but get down to only +750 at either of their shortest.

Although Bailey has garnered a solid number of tickets at both BetMGM and ESPN BET, bookmakers note that they are having to keep Flagg short in order to stymie the robust action still coming in on him.

“What can you do? You just put up the odds and they bet,” Avello said. “As far as the bettors are concerned, there’s Cooper Flagg and nobody else. We will see if that holds up there in the course of the year, but that’s what we’re seeing right now. He’s the darling this year in the league.”

Raise the Cup

According to operators, basketball is the second-most popular sport at American sportsbooks behind the behemoth that is football, and the two sports go head-to-head for the first part of the NBA’s season. Although that means basketball betting doesn’t generally pick up until after the Super Bowl — Horton points out that the end of football roughly coincides with the NBA’s trade deadline and All-Star break — the Association has been able to attract a fair amount of handle early on in recent seasons, namely due to the implementation of the NBA Cup.

“We saw an uptick in bets on those games,” Lieberman said. “There was some genuine excitement; the games are typically pretty fun to watch and high scoring. I think it was a nice idea by the NBA to kind of break up that early-season slog.”

He also noted that the NBA generally sees a surge in betting when the season first begins and that it holds the advantage over the NFL of staging prime-time games throughout the week. Premier late-day matchups, particularly involving West teams, do pretty well for bettor popularity, per bookmakers.

In general, the league will look to build on the momentum it has built up, regardless of the time of year.

“This is just a really popular betting entity for us, and we’ve got a lot of different markets up on it,” Avello said. “We’re expecting another big year of NBA, because NBA hasn’t slowed down since we started.”

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  Zach KramOct 20, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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  Zach Kram is a national NBA writer for ESPN.com, specializing in short- and long-term trends across the league’s analytics landscape. He previously worked at The Ringer covering the NBA and MLB. You can follow Zach on X via @zachkram.

The NBA is in a stretch of unprecedented parity, with seven different champions in the past seven seasons. Not since Kevin Durant played for the Golden State Warriors has a defending champ even reached the conference finals, let alone lifted the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

But one of the biggest questions in the NBA is whether that parity will continue or if it was an interruption between dynasties. Fresh off their first title, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the clear favorites to repeat, with 80% of the league’s general managers choosing them to win it all again in 2025-26.

With a deep, star-studded roster constructed by general manager Sam Presti, the Thunder could be on the precipice of a dynasty. But nothing in the NBA is guaranteed. Last season, 83% of the league’s GMs picked the Boston Celtics to repeat as champions, but they lost in the second round, when Jayson Tatum suffered a torn Achilles tendon.

So, it’s possible that Oklahoma City already peaked with its ultimately successful — but occasionally bumpy — road to the title a year ago. But it’s also possible that Oklahoma City will peak this season. Or the Thunder’s peak is still years away, as a young roster continues to grow.

Put another way: Will the best version of these Thunder be the past, present or future? There are compelling arguments for all three scenarios.

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Why the Thunder might have peaked last season

In the current league landscape, most NBA champions peak when they win their first title. Look at the previous two champions, both of whom, like Oklahoma City, seemed positioned to win more in quick succession.

“We’re not satisfied with one. We want more,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said the night his team won the 2023 title. A few months later, GM Calvin Booth added, “If everything is optimized, we should win three or four.”

But two years later, the Nuggets haven’t returned to the conference finals, and neither Malone nor Booth is still in Denver.

Meanwhile, the 2024 champion Celtics are stuck in limbo as Tatum recovers from a torn Achilles, and they’ve already lost three of the top six players from their title team — Jrue Holiday, Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis — due to financial concerns.

Once a team wins a title, the path of least resistance will always be to fall rather than to keep climbing. That could be true for Oklahoma City; the team posted the best point differential in NBA history (plus-12.9 per game), which will be difficult to top again. The Thunder also went 68-14, tied for the fifth-best 82-game record ever.

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History says such dominant teams are almost certain to regress. Out of the 26 previous teams with 64 or more wins in a season, 25 of them won fewer games the following season.

Oklahoma City also benefited from some shooting luck last season, which could even out going forward. Last season, Thunder opponents made just 37% of their wide-open 3s, which was the worst mark against any defense.

On all 3-pointers, Thunder opponents shot 1.3 percentage points worse than expected, according to GeniusIQ, based on factors such as the shooter’s identity and location. That was the second-largest “unlucky” margin in the league. Had their opponents made as many 3s as expected, they would have scored around 120 more points during the season — enough to drop the Thunder’s point differential from first to fifth all time.

Separate from luck, the Thunder could post worse numbers if they focus on the playoffs and their ultimate goal rather than the regular season. Sure, they’re young, but they’re also coming off the shortest offseason of almost all their players’ careers — and they’d like to keep playing into late June every year.

The 2024-25 Thunder had to deal with some injury issues — more on those in a moment — but their most important player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, played almost every game en route to the MVP. Will coach Mark Daigneault rest Gilgeous-Alexander more after he played 99 games, counting regular season and playoffs, last season?

Even if he still plays almost every game, Gilgeous-Alexander could regress somewhat from his 2024-25 highs. He had the 35th season in NBA history with a scoring average of at least 32 points per game, and in 28 of the previous 34 instances, the player failed to reach that mark the following season. (The exceptions are Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid, Michael Jordan, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain twice.)

Oklahoma City’s roster could reach its peak in the 2025-26 season. AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Why the Thunder might peak this season

The typical explanations for regression don’t seem to apply much to the Thunder. First, they’re on the right side of the aging curve. Alex Caruso and Kenrich Williams, both entering their age-31 seasons, are the only players on the roster older than 27.

Oklahoma City wasn’t unusually healthy last season. Although Gilgeous-Alexander played 76 games, other Thunder starters were unavailable more often: Luguentz Dort missed 11 games, Jalen Williams 13, Isaiah Hartenstein 25 and Chet Holmgren 50. Having Hartenstein and Holmgren, in particular, on the floor more would be a bonus in 2025-26, as the two centers didn’t play a minute together before February, then needed to develop chemistry on the fly.

The Thunder also didn’t lose any irreplaceable championship players. Instead, they’re returning players who accounted for 99.2% of their playoff minutes in 2024-25. They should be better and more prepared in future postseasons, thanks to the experience they gained in the pressure cooker last spring.

Just look at Daigneault as an example of improving from experience. He was slow to adjust in his inaugural playoff trip in 2023-24, but proved tactically sharper en route to the title a year later. Daigneault’s defensive gambits against Nikola Jokic in a second-round slugfest — notably using the smaller, peskier Caruso against Jokic in Game 7 — worked about as well as possible against the three-time MVP.

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All of those factors suggest further room for growth. Remember when I wrote that of the previous 26 teams with the best records in a season, 25 of them declined the following season? That means one great team improved — and that was the Warriors, who jumped from 67 wins in 2014-15 to an NBA-record 73 wins in 2015-16. That’s a relevant precedent because I wrote a piece last spring about the similarities between the 2014-15 Warriors and the 2024-25 Thunder.

If that pattern continues, then the Thunder would reach a higher peak this season.

Now might be their best chance to improve before the roster gets excessively expensive. This season, OKC’s big three of Gilgeous-Alexander, Holmgren and Jalen Williams will combine to earn 38% of the cap. In 2026-27, that figure jumps to at least 75% as maximum extensions for Holmgren and Williams kick in. And in 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30, it will be at least 85% because of Gilgeous-Alexander’s record-setting supermax.

While some individual Thunder players might peak later in the decade when they reach their prime, the Thunder team might peak now, before the organization has to shed contracts for its cap sheet to remain viable in the NBA’s new financial era. After this season, Dort and Hartenstein have club options for a combined $46.7 million. Would Oklahoma City consider losing one or both championship-level starters and trust Cason Wallace and Jaylin Williams to fill in the gaps with more playing time?

The Thunder win because of their depth and young star power, and 2025-26 might bring the best balance between the two strengths.

Why the Thunder might peak in the future

Focusing on Oklahoma City’s youth, it’s impossible to overstate the uniqueness of last season’s title. The Thunder’s championship playoff rotation had an average age of 24.7 years, according to Basketball Reference.

But teams that win titles tend to skew older. The average age for a championship team since 1984 (when the playoffs expanded to 16 teams) has been 28.7 years, which suggests the Thunder core is four years ahead of schedule.

Oklahoma City is an extreme outlier in this regard. Before last season, the youngest championship team since 1984 was — who else — the 2014-15 Warriors, at 26.4 years, or still nearly two years older than the title-winning Thunder.

Number of Champions Since 1984 by Team Age

Zach Kram

That gap gives the Thunder so much room and time to grow, even though they’re already at the top of the league. It would be foolish to prematurely place a cap on their potential — particularly for budding stars Jalen Williams and Holmgren.

Here is every player this century with an All-NBA and All-Defensive team nod by age 23: Williams, Evan Mobley, Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, Paul George, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan.

With the exception of Simmons and the still-young Williams and Mobley, every player on that list made at least one All-NBA first team and finished third or better in MVP voting. Williams should develop into a superstar.

Holmgren, meanwhile, has already developed into one of the league’s top defenders in his first two seasons, allowing opponents to shoot just 50.6% when he’s the closest defender near the basket, according to an analysis of NBA Advanced Stats data. That’s the third-best mark among 389 players with at least 100 shots defended in that span, slightly better than Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert (both at 52%).

If Holmgren — who’s already a 37% 3-point shooter, albeit with a slow release — improves his offensive game as he approaches his mid-20s, he, too, will be an annual All-NBA honoree. The Thunder could have three top-10 players in their primes, growing and winning together.

And though the Thunder might soon have to lose a nonstar such as Dort or Hartenstein for financial reasons, they also have some tricks up their sleeves to help manage salary restrictions and keep more of their rotation intact. For instance, Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Joe and Jaylin Williams all signed extensions with year-over-year declines, which limits how much they’ll count against the cap when their star teammates get expensive. Team options at the end of many contracts will allow Presti to remain nimble.

Presti should also be able to find replacements for departed role players in the draft (Keep an eye on 2025 second-rounder Brooks Barnhizer, who’s excelled in summer league and the preseason.). Typically, dynastic teams struggle to maintain a youth pipeline because they’re picking 30th every year or trading their picks for win-now upgrades. But that shouldn’t be a problem for the Thunder, who hold extra first-round selections in 2026, 2027 and 2029; favorable swaps in 2026, 2027 and 2028; and so many second-rounders that they’ll likely have to trade a bunch. There isn’t enough room on the roster for even a fraction of Oklahoma City’s picks to matriculate.

If they do win multiple titles, history suggests that a future Thunder champion will be superior to the 2024-25 version. As measured by a formula developed by ESPN’s Kevin Pelton — which is based on teams’ point differentials in the regular season and playoffs — most NBA dynasties peak statistically midway through:

• The 2010s Warriors won their first title in 2015 and peaked in 2017

• The 2000s Lakers won their first title in 2000 and peaked in 2001

• The 1990s Bulls won their first title in 1991 and peaked in 1996

• The 1980s Lakers won their first title in 1980 and peaked in 1987

• The 1980s Celtics won their first title in 1981 and peaked in 1986

The Thunder have the right core to raise their ceiling, and the draft stash and player development system to support a sustainable winner. They might still be years away from their peak. That’s a scary prospect for the rest of the league, given that last season’s version went 68-14, set a record for point differential and won the title — possibly the first of many.

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The annual NBA GM Survey offers a fantastic yearly glimpse into what the lead executives around the league value and how they think.

Itâ€s also a terrible predictive tool — donâ€t place your bets based on their responses (might I recommend the clever folks at the NBC Sports betting page for your tips). A year ago, 25 of the 30 GMs picked Boston to repeat (that was probably 26, Brad Stevens canâ€t vote for his own team), yet Oklahoma City won 68 games and the title — the GMs have picked the champion just once in the last seven years (the 2024 Celtics).

So, is it a worrying sign for Oklahoma City that 24 of the 30 GMS picked them to repeat as champions? No, itâ€s more a sign of the conventional wisdom thinking around the league, which this survey certainly provides. Some highlights from the voting:

NBA Champion: Oklahoma City Thunder (80% of the vote). Cleveland and Denver were tied for second (7% each).

East Champion: Cleveland Cavaliers (63% of voters had them first, 27% second), with the New York Knicks second (30% first-place votes, 53% second).

West Champion: Oklahoma City Thunder (87% of voters had them first). Denver was second (10% had them first).

Who will win MVP? Nikola Jokic, 67% of the vote. The next three in line were Luka Doncic (10%), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (8%), and Victor Wembanyama (7%).

Who will win Rookie of the Year? Cooper Flagg, who got all but one vote (and Nico Harrison canâ€t vote for his own guy, so there was one vote for VJ Edgecombe). Flagg was also overwhelmingly voted the rookie that will be the best in this class five years from now (just know five years ago the GMs voted James Wiseman that honor).

What player would you pick to start a franchise? Victor Wembanyama (83% of the vote, which makes you wonder what the other 17% are thinking).

Player most likely to have a breakout season: Amen Thompson in Houston (30% of the vote). Brandon Miller (Charlotte), Ausar Thompson (Detroit) and Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio) were tied for second.

Which team made the best overall moves this offseason? The Atlanta Hawks (53% of the vote). The second choice went to the Houston Rockets (27%).

Which one player acquisition will make the biggest impact? Kevin Durant to Houston (73% of the vote). Desmond Bane to Orlando was second, and also voted the most underrated move of the offseason.

Most surprising move of the offseason: Milwaukee waiving/stretching Damian Lillard (second on this list was the Bucks signing Myles Turner, which only happened because of the waive/stretch of Lillard).

Who was the biggest steal in terms of where they were drafted? In a bit of a surprise, it went to Kasparas Jakucionis to Miami, selected at No. 20. Tied for second was Ace Bailey to Utah at No. 5 and Carter Bryant to San Antonio at No. 14.

Best defender in the NBA: Victor Wembanyama with 80% of the vote. Dyson Daniels was voted the best perimeter defender in the league.

Who is the best head coach in the NBA? Newly minted USA Basketball head coach Erik Spoelstra of Miami, with 52% of the vote (OKCâ€s Mark Daigneault was second, and the Clippers†Tyronn Lue was third).

Which teamâ€s level of success this season is toughest to predict? The Philadelphia 76ers got 47% of the vote (Dallas and Golden State were second and third). With all due respect to the questions around the Mavs and Warriors, how do you not pick the Sixers?

Which player is the most athletic? Amen Thompson got 58% of the vote to finish first (Anthony Edwards in Minnesota was second).

Hereâ€s one I questioned a little: The GMs voted Stephen Curry the best leader in the NBA. That surprised me. Not that Curry isnâ€t a strong leader, but would you put him ahead of Jalen Brunson, LeBron James, or even the injured Damian Lillard?

One other interesting question and answer: What rule most needs to change? The No. 1 answer was concerns about roster construction, specifically that the tax apron rules are too harsh, and that there should be a salary cap discount for a teamâ€s own drafted players. A lot of fans feel the same way.

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  Tim BontempsOct 9, 2025, 11:46 AM ET

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  Tim Bontemps is a senior NBA writer for ESPN.com who covers the league and what’s impacting it on and off the court, including trade deadline intel, expansion and his MVP Straw Polls. You can find Tim alongside Brian Windhorst and Tim MacMahon on The Hoop Collective podcast.

The annual NBA.com survey of all 30 of the league’s front offices has tapped the Oklahoma City Thunder to defend their title.

Like in ESPN’s annual offseason survey last month, the Thunder were runaway favorites to win the title, with 80% of general managers across the NBA picking OKC to win for a second straight year — which, if the Thunder are able to do so, would mark the first time since the Golden State Warriors repeated in 2018 that a team would manage to repeat as champions.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets each got a couple of votes, while the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks each received a single selection.

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The annual survey — which goes out to all 30 teams and doesn’t allow teams to pick themselves or anyone from their own rosters, meaning no player or team can ever get better than 97% of the vote in a category — also had Oklahoma City and Cleveland as the heavy favorites to win their respective conferences. Besides the Thunder — who were first on 87% of ballots, and second on the remaining 10% — the Nuggets received 10% of the first-place votes and the Rockets received a single one.

They were followed, in order, by the Minnesota Timberwolves, Warriors, LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs.

In the East, Cleveland and New York both were unanimously selected to finish in the top three spots in the East, with the Cavaliers getting 63% of the votes for first place, 27% for second place and 7% for third. The Knicks, meanwhile, received 30%, 53% and 13%, respectively.

The only other team to receive any first-place votes was the Orlando Magic, who received 7%. The Magic were also picked to finish third overall, followed by the Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics.

Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, who has finished first or second in the last five MVP ballots, was the runaway pick to win this year’s top individual honor, claiming 67% of the votes, while Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama received 83% of the votes as the player GMs would pick if they had a chance to select anyone to start a franchise, making him the winner in that category for the second straight season.

Rockets forward Amen Thompson, meanwhile, received 30% of the votes in the “most likely to have a breakout season” category, which goes hand-in-hand with him being the current betting favorite to be this season’s Most Improved Player.

There was little debate over who the best player is at any position, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jokic claiming the honor at each position. The only one of the five positions to receive less than 70% of the vote for the top selection was small forward, where Doncic received 40%, followed by Jayson Tatum (20), Kevin Durant (17), LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard (7 each), with Jaylen Brown, Jimmy Butler and Jalen Williams each getting a single vote.

In the offseason superlatives section, the Hawks (53%) were the top pick for having the best offseason, followed by the Rockets (27%) and Nuggets (10%). The Rockets trading for Kevin Durant, meanwhile, was picked as the offseason move that will have the biggest impact, while the Magic were both picked as the most improved team this season (47%) and having made the most underrated move by trading for guard Desmond Bane and the Thunder (83%) were tapped as the league’s best defensive team.

Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 overall pick in June’s NBA draft, was the massive favorite to win both Rookie of the Year and to be the best rookie from this class in five years, while Miami Heat guard Kasparas Jakucionis was the pick to be the biggest steal in this year’s draft class.

In the individual superlatives section, Wembanyama (80%) was picked as the league’s best defensive player; Erik Spoelstra (52%) was picked as its best coach for the sixth straight season; Jokic (80%) was picked as the NBA’s best passer and player with the highest basketball IQ, while Antetokounmpo and Wembanyama were tied, with 30% of the vote each, for the honor of being the league’s most versatile player, and Stephen Curry was the winner, with 47% of the vote, for being the player you’d want to take a shot with the game on the line.

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For the first time since the Golden State Warriors’ dynasty, there will be a repeat champion in the NBA … at least, that’s what team general managers believe. The annual NBA GM survey was released Thursday, and a whopping 80% of those surveyed believe the Oklahoma City Thunder will repeat as champions.

While that’s a staggering number, it shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise. The Thunder boast an impressive young core of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams. In fact, NBA GMs rate that core as the best in the league, with the team also earning a victory in that survey question. The Thunder received 50% of the vote there, with the San Antonio Spurs finishing second.

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With Holmgren and Williams signed to long-term deals this offseason, the Thunder should be a similar threat to win it all next season. Getting 80% of NBA GMs to agree on that topic might come as a shock, but that’s typically how the survey goes. The Boston Celtics — who were coming off a championship during the 2023-24 NBA season — managed to gain 83% of the vote when GMs were asked who would win the championship ahead of last season. Those GMs were wrong, though the Celtics were once again a tough contender.

If the Thunder aren’t going to win it all, NBA GMs see four other teams as possible candidates to take home the Larry O’Brien trophy. Both the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Denver Nuggets each received 7% of the vote. The Houston Rockets and New York Knicks also received at least one vote among GMs.

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Nikola Jokić honored by NBA GMs in annual survey

At 30, Nuggets star Nikola Jokić might be entering the second half of his career. But NBA GMs don’t expect him to lose a step this season. Jokić dominated the annual survey, finishing first in seven different questions, all of which complimented his skills.

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Jokić is the most likely to win the 2025-26 NBA MVP award, the player who forces opponents to make the most adjustments, the best center in the NBA, the best international player in the game, the best passer in the game and the player with the best basketball IQ, per league general managers.

In addition to that, Jokić finished third in the voting for best leader and also received votes for most versatile player and player a GM would want to take a shot with the game on the line.

Despite being 30, Jokić also finished third when GMs were asked what player they would choose if they were building a new franchise from scratch. San Antonio Spurs standout Victor Wembanyama easily won that category, picking up 83% of the votes. But Jokić’s presence in the top 3 proves NBA GMs still think extremely highly of his game.

NBA GMs take aim at Clippers?

NBA GMs chose “roster construction” as the one thing they would change in the league. That was a wide-ranging topic on the survey, which mentioned, “Apron rules too harsh, Add a cap discount for own drafted players, Allow trading partial salaries, Make all minimum contracts the same” as things GMs wanted to change. That option received 26% of the vote.

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Lower down the list, however, some GMs may have decided to take a shot at the Los Angeles Clippers. Five percent of GMs listed “Higher penalties for cap circumvention” as the biggest change they would make in the league.

That desire comes amid reports suggesting the Clippers tried to circumvent the NBA salary cap when negotiating a free-agent deal with star Kawhi Leonard ahead of the 2019-20 NBA season. Both the Clippers and Leonard have denied any wrongdoing, though that didn’t stop the NBA from reopening its investigation into the situation.

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Cooper Flaggâ€s official NBA debut is almost here.

Flagg played in his first preseason game on Monday night for the Dallas Mavericks, just months after the franchise selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. While he only played 14 minutes, he helped lead the Mavericks to a 106-89 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.

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After a bit of a slow start, Flaggâ€s first points of the night came in the second quarter when he sank a wild acrobatic contested layup. He then backed it up with a 3-pointer off the dribble not even a minute later.

Though he wasn’t scoring early, Flagg looked very comfortable out there. He found Dwight Powell for a wide-open dunk after running the point midway through the first.

By halftime, Flagg was up to 10 points and six rebounds after he shot 3-of-6 from the field. The Mavericks broke open a 26-point lead at the break. The Thunder, who beat the Charlotte Hornets in their preseason opener on Sunday, went just 13-of-49 from the field as a group in the first 24 minutes.

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While the Thunder rallied in the second half — they outscored Dallas by 10 points in the third, and then opened the fourth quarter on a 21-11 run — it came too late. The Mavericks held on to grab the 17-point win and start the preseason 1-0. Flagg, along with the rest of the Mavericks starters, didn’t return in the second half.

While it doesnâ€t actually count, Monday night marked a critical step for Flagg before he officially begins his NBA career on Oct. 22. Thatâ€s when the Mavericks open their regular season against Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.

Flagg dominated at Duke, where he won consensus National Player of the Year honors and helped the Blue Devils reach the Final Four. He averaged 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game there, and was long considered the favorite to go No. 1 overall in the draft. The Mavericks, just months after the chaos that came with trading away superstar Luka DonÄić, remarkably won the NBA Draft lottery for the first time in franchise history. They only had a 1.8% chance to do so.

Flagg appeared in just two Summer League games for the Mavericks before the team shut him down. He dropped 31 points in the teamâ€s second game following a very rough start in which he shot just 5-of-21 from the field.

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The Mavericks went 39-43 last season, and largely fell apart after the DonÄić trade. They dealt with several significant injuries, including Kyrie Irvingâ€s torn ACL, and the teamâ€s front office dealt with immense blowback as they limped to the finish just a year removed from their first NBA Finals run in more than a decade. Irving is expected to make a mid-season return to the court.

Itâ€s unclear how much the Mavericks will utilize Flagg throughout the preseason. The team has three games left, starting with a matchup with the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday. Theyâ€ll wrap up with a game against DonÄić and the Lakers on Oct. 15 in Las Vegas.

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But once the season finally gets going later this month and Flagg settles in, expectations in Dallas are sure to be significantly higher after the turmoil the franchise was entrenched in last season. Fair or not, the 18-year-old will play a critical part in getting the team out of it and back to prominence in an already loaded Western Conference.

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In the Dallas Mavericks’ preseason opener, Cooper Flagg wasted no time showing why he was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft.

The 18-year-old rookie out of Duke turned heads in his debut, flashing elite vision, defensive instincts and confidence well beyond his years. Flagg’s highlight reel from the night quickly made the rounds on social media, with fans marveling at his poise and playmaking.

Flagg led all starters — including Anthony Davis, D’Angelo Russell, Klay Thompson and Dereck Lively II — in scoring at the half, posting 10 points, six rebounds and a block.

Even as the No. 1 overall pick, Flagg couldn’t hide his excitement ahead of Monday’s preseason debut, eager to use it as a springboard into the regular season after a long and productive offseason and training camp.

“Yeah, I’m excited,” Flagg said, per Dallas Hoops Journal Grant Afseth . “It’s obviously preseason, like you said, but it’s another step in the right direction, getting down the road and getting ready for the season. I’m excited to be able to get out there with the guys. We’ve been practicing and playing hard for a while now out here in the summer, so I’m excited to just get on the court and really play somebody else.”

The rookie first took the floor during the 2025 NBA Summer League, where he averaged 20.5 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 blocks over two games before being shut down for the remainder of the summer.

Dallas will open its season at home against the San Antonio Spurs on Oct. 22.

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  Baxter HolmesSep 30, 2025, 01:29 PM ET

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  Baxter Holmes (@Baxter) is a senior writer for ESPN Digital and Print, focusing on the NBA. He has covered the Lakers, the Celtics and previously worked for The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times.

ON A WEDNESDAY morning a little more than 30 years ago, before his mother left for work in downtown Oklahoma City, a boy named Kyle Genzer told her he loved her.

It was a sunny, cloudless day. “Like today,” he says.

He tilts his head and looks toward the sky. She was in a hurry. He thought he’d see her later that day, after school. He wishes he’d hugged her, he says.

At 9:02 a.m., as he sat in his eighth grade class at Wellston Middle School, about 40 miles east of Oklahoma City, Genzer felt the school shake and the windows rattle.

“We thought it was thunder,” he says.

Minutes later, his uncle, a teacher there, knocked on the classroom door and told him there had been an explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where his mother worked as a loan officer for the Federal Employees Credit Union.

It would be days before they learned her fate, that Jamie Genzer was killed along with 167 others in the most devastating act of homegrown terrorism in American history. She was 32 years old.

Jamie was a single mother who raised Kyle and his sister, Krista, and sang in the Sweet Adelines quartet. Her singing often woke the kids in the mornings.

At 14, after helping to pick out his mom’s casket and planning her funeral, Kyle learned to endure the quiet.

It’s May 26, and Genzer is standing on a sloping, grassy hill at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. He’s 44 now, 12 years older than his mom was when she died.

In front of him is the Field of Empty Chairs, each one of the 168 made of glass, steel and bronze and bearing the names of those who never came home. Jamie worked on the third floor. Her chair is in the third row.

Just in front of them, in the second row, there are 15 smaller chairs. Those honor the 15 children who were killed inside America’s Kids day care center, which was on the second floor of the building.

A small American flag is planted into the carefully manicured grass next to every chair, each one resembling an empty seat at a dinner table.

Behind Genzer, the quiet is broken by water falling over the edges of a shallow reflecting pool.

“I can feel her presence here,” he says. ​​

Kyle Genzer was 14 when he lost his mom, Jamie, in the bombing. He often visits the memorial’s Field of Empty Chairs, where each of the 168 resemble an empty seat at a dinner table. Left: Baxter Holmes/ESPN. Right: Courtesy Genzer.T op: Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Six springs ago, Genzer stood on a small stage near this very spot, next to his son, Brendlee. They were joined by dignitaries and others who had lost someone in the bombing, and they were there to read the names of the 168, as part of an annual tradition known as the Remembrance Ceremony, which includes 168 seconds of silence, starting at 9:02 a.m.

Seated on the small stage near them was Sam Presti, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s general manager.

Brendlee was 14, the same age his father was when Jamie died. They read about a dozen names each. After the ceremony, they met Presti for the first time. He posed for a photo with Brendlee next to Jamie’s chair. “That just meant everything,” Kyle says.

When the Thunder arrived in Oklahoma City in 2008, Presti quickly established a tradition for his franchise as much as a mandate: that each Thunder player and staff member would, immediately after joining the team, tour the memorial.

He had his reasons. It was important, he told them, to understand that defining moment at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, to learn how the city banded together afterward in a collective recovery that became known nationally as the Oklahoma Standard. He wanted his team to be inspired by that effort, to be built in its image.

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He also wanted them to understand that they would be playing in front of and interacting with people inside their arena who were directly affected — with the tragedy quite literally encircling the team during every home game.

For 17 years, the Thunder have maintained an intimate connection to the memorial — and to the “Oklahoma Standard.” That connection is led by Presti, who has embraced the Oklahoma Standard to the point that it now defines the culture of a championship team with dynastic aspirations. It is carried on by players who, behind the scenes, have formed bonds with first responders, survivors, family members who lost loved ones, memorial staff and city and state officials whose decisions in the wake of the bombing helped lead to the Thunder’s arrival.

“The Thunder would not be in Oklahoma City without the response that took place on April 19, 1995,” Presti said during an event at the memorial last fall, “and without the sacrifices and the efforts that were made to rebuild this city.”

Only two Thunder players were alive then — guard Alex Caruso, who was a 1-year-old, and forward Kenrich Williams, who was 4 months old. About half of the state’s population wasn’t alive when the bombing occurred. Time moves forward. People forget. Stories fade.

But for those who have spent three decades living in an endless fog of grief and trauma, the people who planned funerals before they could drive and who still carry glass from the blast beneath their skin, the Thunder’s efforts to keep their story alive means more than they can say.

Standing beside his mother’s chair, Genzer places his hand over his heart, near the Thunder logo on his shirt.

“It’s why we will always — win, lose or draw — be Thunder fans,” Genzer says, his voice catching in his throat, “because you can’t be part of this city without understanding what took place in 1995.”

Thunder GM Sam Presti requires all new employees, including players, to tour the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. For 17 years, it has been a rite of passage. Mary Ann Eckstein/OKC Thunder

THAT MORNING, PRESTIwas an 18-year-old high school senior in Concord, Massachusetts. He had watched the images on cable television while soaking a turned ankle — from a basketball game earlier that day — in the bucket of ice water.

“It was probably the first real stark reality of the world that we were living in,” he would later say.

He arrived in Oklahoma City with the team in July 2008, after the Seattle Supersonics had been bought and relocated by Oklahoma City businessmen. He was 30 then, the second-youngest general manager in NBA history.

Presti stayed at the city’s oldest hotel — the Skirvin, a 13-floor, art deco three-tower complex built in 1945. He walked the city, trying to get a sense of the place, and he came to the memorial, which is framed by two five-story bronze gates: the 9:01 East Gate, signifying the moment before, and the 9:03 West Gate, when the healing began.

The memorial museum is spread across three floors and 50,000 square feet, and it welcomes about 500,000 people a year. It guides visitors through the morning of April 19, 1995, minute by minute, and shows what unfolded in the days, weeks, months and years that followed: the explosion, the recovery, the manhunt, the trials, the 2001 execution of Timothy McVeigh, who drove the yellow Ryder truck that carried the bomb.

When Presti visited, he was moved by a quote on the second floor from network television journalist Tom Brokaw:

“Oklahoma has earned its place in American folklore as cowboy tough and proudly self-reliant. Oklahomans may feel more vulnerable now and a little disoriented by what’s happened to them, but in their response to this madness they have elevated us all with their essential sense of goodness, community, and compassion.”

The words stuck with him.

Soon after completing the tour, Presti called Kari Watkins.

For a team without a culture and an identity, Presti sought to establish one that embraced the city’s response and the ideals that Brokaw referenced, and he enlisted Watkins, who was the memorial museum’s first employee in 1996 and is now its president and CEO. He wanted the team to swing by before the Thunder’s first practice that fall.

Nick Collison was 14 years old when he watched the news in Iowa Falls, Iowa, and he heard the words “domestic terrorism.”

He was a 27-year-old Thunder forward when the team arrived at the memorial before training camp began in the fall of 2008.

“I remember the chairs,” Collison told ESPN. “That’s what hit home, because you hear the statistics. But then you think of all the people, the children.”

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Steven Taylor joined them on the tour, leading players past the wooden gavel he used in 2004 to sentence bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols to 161 consecutive life sentences without parole in the largest murder trial in American history. Watkins was there too. They explained to Collison and the team that this marked a defining event in the city the team now called home.

And so began the education, and the partnership.

In the years ahead, Watkins fielded calls from Presti late at night and early in the morning. She led tours before the museum opened and after it closed. There were tours on the memorial grounds for draft prospects and free agents, and if those players joined the Thunder, then they would also tour the museum.

It quickly became a rite of passage.

Watkins has completed more than 550 tours with Thunder players, staff and their families since then. Presti remains a constant presence: He has never missed a player tour, as he and Watkins repeat the same message that they first started sharing 17 years ago:

“You need to know and understand this story.”

Kari Watkins, the president of the memorial, has completed more than 550 tours with Thunder players and officials. In 2024, for First Responders Day, guards Jalen Williams and Isaiah Joe attended. Mary Anne Eckstein/OKC Thunder

INSIDE THE MUSEUM, the Thunder’s presence is immediate and omnipresent. In a framed display case on a near wall is a magazine cover of Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander wearing the team’s 2019-20 City Edition jersey, a special uniform created in collaboration with the memorial.

When tours begin, visitors enter a room and hear a recording of a water board hearing that began at 9 a.m. that morning across the street. Then, they hear the explosion itself.

On a wall-length screen, the faces of the 168 appear, and Watkins says the players always fall silent. “It’s just so unfortunate,” Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. “To have a child of my own now makes it even more crazy.”

Watkins has often told Thunder players that they are the largest ambassadors for the city, and, after walking through the museum, Gilgeous-Alexander said he understood what that meant.

“The city was never the same,” he says, “but the way those families in the city have bounced back from it is so inspiring and so motivational. It gave me a little bit of a sense of purpose while I’m out there playing.”

He knows well that every night he’s there, everywhere he goes, he represents more than just the team. He represents them.

“Like, for me, playing for Canada gives me — it’s a natural sense of purpose being from there, but coming to Oklahoma City and seeing that and experiencing that, it gave me meaning behind the name on my chest, and a reason to go out there and play hard. It’s a connector to the community. I think that’s what the organization wants us to feel — connected to the community, and it’s sad that it’s a tragic way, but it is a connection nonetheless.”

Thunder forward Isaiah Hartenstein, born three years after the bombing, visited the memorial within his first week of joining the Thunder last summer. He says he didn’t know much about it before.

He walked through with his wife, Kourtney, passing through exhibits describing the second-floor daycare, where, on that morning, 21 preschool children had gathered, including four babies who, from their cribs lined up against the window, were known to reach for the rays of sunlight and the passing clouds in the sky just outside. The youngest was 4 months old.

Sitting at the team’s practice facility, Hartenstein described his tour. “That was tough,” he says quietly. “Especially because I just had a kid.”

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Hartenstein learned that the bombing registered seismic waves equivalent to a magnitude 3.2 earthquake and was felt as far as 55 miles away. That more than 330 buildings were damaged; another 15 were destroyed and needed to be torn down.

That of the nearly 1 million people in Oklahoma City at the time, one-third of the population knew someone among the 168 and the nearly 700 hurt or injured. Nearly 190,000 of the people in central Oklahoma attended at least one funeral. Some attended a dozen; some attended three in a single day.

Then Hartenstein saw the city’s response. The passersby who rushed the injured to hospitals in the beds of pickup trucks. How five blocks away, at the Myriad Convention Center, the Oklahoma Restaurant Association canceled its trade show and rushed the food and equipment to feed the army of rescue workers and volunteers.

That volunteer lines stretched outside blood banks. How after a call for boots, hundreds of pairs arrived, with one man donating the pair off his feet.

One police officer recalls what looked like a Wal-Mart-sized tent rising out of nowhere, with hundreds of coolers of food and drinks, tall stacks of jeans and gloves and shirts.

Rescue workers arrived from California, New York, Arizona — part of a recovery effort ultimately spanning 12,000 people — and they never saw a bill from restaurants, hotels or anywhere else.

As he prepared to leave after several days, one rescue worker opened his wallet and showed then-Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating a dollar bill that he had brought with him. No one would accept his money, he said. This was no ordinary dollar, he added: It was an Oklahoma dollar.

“You see how great of a community Oklahoma City is,” Hartenstein says. “I don’t think there’s a lot of cities out there that would leave whatever they got going on to go straight to the site to go help.”

The collective effort, many first responders from then say, was nothing new. But national media called the response the Oklahoma Standard, which Presti sometimes calls “The Standard.”

And it became the foundation upon which the Oklahoma City Thunder would be built.

The “Oklahoma Standard,” a term the national media coined for the collective response to the bombing, symbolizes honor, kindness and acts of service. In 2008, after touring the memorial, Presti made it the foundation upon which his team would be built. Top: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki. Left: Jim West/ZUMA Press Wire. Right: Mark Zimmerman/Getty Images.

THIRTY YEARS LATER, that foundation was laid bare.

During a midsummer event held inside the memorial museum about the civic role of sports in a community, Erin Lewis, the Thunder’s director of brand influence and identity, sits on a small stage and addresses a question about the Oklahoma Standard and its relationship to the team.

As she speaks, the Thunder are one win away from the NBA championship. “The Oklahoma Standard is not only ingrained in us as a group as Oklahomans, but it’s really ingrained in who we are as a brand,” she says, adding, “The best way that you can connect with your target audience … is for them to see themselves reflected in you.”

She says the team tries to reflect key values to Oklahomans, “certainly first and foremost being the Oklahoma Standard.”

In 2013, a 1.3-mile wide EF5 tornado that reached winds of 210 mph carved through Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, killing 24, including seven children at an elementary school, injuring more than 200 and causing $2 billion in damage.

Within days, the Thunder and their then-star Kevin Durant donated $1 million apiece to the American Red Cross to support recovery efforts. Presti and players walked among the rubble and visited the hospital where victims recovered. The team rebuilt basketball courts at schools destroyed by the tornado.

“The city will come together and support each other, as it has in the face of past adversity,” Presti told ESPN then. “It is the Oklahoma Standard, and it’s what makes this place what it is.”

In 2015, for the bombing’s 20th anniversary, Presti chaired the Oklahoma Standard Campaign, which encouraged Oklahomans to commit one act of service, honor and kindness in the month of April.

That same month, on April 19, Thunder staff and players placed flowers at all 168 chairs at the memorial.

“I think it’s important for us to realize that as much as it is recognizing the time elapsed,” Presti said at that ceremony, “it’s also a reminder to everybody that we all have a responsibility going forward to recognize and make sure that this stays top of mind for everybody in the community and the state that this is not something that can ever be forgotten.”

Last October, Thunder forward Jalen Williams and Thunder guard Isaiah Joe visited the memorial for First Responders Day, where firefighters, police officers and EMT officials — including those who were part of the recovery effort on April 19, 1995 — were honored. The players signed autographs, posed for photos, spoke with officials and heard the stories.

“You kind of feel that all throughout Oklahoma,” Williams said that day. “That’s something that our team tries to carry with us.”

A month later, in support of the museum’s mental health program, Hartenstein recorded a video for family members, survivors and first responders.

“We’re here for you guys,” he told them. “We’re cheering for you guys. We just want to make sure you guys get all the resources you guys need to keep shining and keep enjoying life.”

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Hartenstein has been involved in 29 charitable efforts since arriving in Oklahoma City last summer, from partnering with a group that supports homeless children to donating and distributing meals on Thanksgiving to hosting clinics at local Boys & Girls Clubs.

“Sam does a good job of instilling that in us,” Hartenstein said of the Oklahoma Standard. “I think Sam also does a good job of bringing in the right people. I think that’s the special thing about this organization. We’re talented, but I think everyone cares about the community. I don’t think you find that a lot, but you have to give a lot of respect for Sam doing his research on finding the right people too, and also just building a culture — that we’re part of the community.”

Collison spent his 15-year playing career with the organization. His nickname is “Mr. Thunder.” He is the only Thunder player to have his number retired.

Today, Collison is an amateur scout for the franchise. Of the Oklahoma Standard, and what it looks like inside the organization, Collison says, “I think the Oklahoma Standard is looking out for each other, taking care of people, being kind to people. I’ve definitely felt it. That’s just how they are.”

When asked how the ideals of the Oklahoma Standard are represented inside the Thunder organization, Presti answers carefully — a characteristic that has long been his trademark.

“Since we arrived in 2008, we’ve sought inspiration, education and purpose from our surrounding community and the history of it,” he wrote in an email to ESPN. “We’ve done this intentionally but also left room for it to happen organically. We never want it to be too instructed or prescribed.

“So it’s really not for us to determine if the Oklahoma Standard is represented within the organization. That’s for other people to determine. All we’re attempting to do is make the people here proud of their team. And, if we are doing it well at certain points in time, hopefully they will see some reflections of certain things close to them that make them proud to be from Oklahoma.”

In 2019, as the the 25th anniversary of the bombing approached, the Thunder hosted family members of the 168 victims and presented to them customized jerseys. An inscription below the collar read: “We remember those who were changed forever. Top: Zach Beeker/NBAE via Getty Images. Bottom row: Zach Beeker/OKC Thunder.

ON THE EVENING of Nov. 5, 2019, during Gilgeous-Alexander’s first season with the Thunder, Taylor, the judge in the 2004 Nichols trial, stepped on top of a folding chair in a room in the bowels of the Thunder’s arena before the team played the Orlando Magic.

He looked into the eyes of the family members of the 168.

They had gathered from all over the country, as young as 11 and as old as 90. It was 168 days before the 25th anniversary, and the holiday season was approaching, when losses and empty seats at the dinner table can feel even more pronounced.

Taylor, the chairman of the memorial that year, spoke for maybe three minutes.

“There are 18,000 people out there tonight,” he told them, “who are ready to join us in this feeling.”

At the arena on that November night in 2019, the Thunder had presented the family members of the 168 with a small box.

Inside of it was a charcoal gray 2019-20 City Edition jersey, which featured a number of poignant references to the memorial. On the shorts were bronze emblems representing the two gates of time. On the tag, the words “Service Honor Kindness” — the tenets of the Oklahoma Standard. An inscription below the collar read: “We remember those who were changed forever.”

The belt of the shorts features a depiction of the Survivor Tree, an American elm now nearly a century old that was embedded with shrapnel, metal and glass. It was the only tree in the surrounding area that survived the bombing.

Today its scars remain, its trunk and branches still charred from the blast. Saplings from it have been planted across the country.

For each of the families, the jerseys also carried the name of those lost. Before the national anthem and the lineup announcements, the family members walked with Taylor onto the court. The lights were down. Fans turned their attention to the videoboard above center court. The team played a tribute video. Photos of the 168 flashed across the screen.

Then, the family members standing at center court were illuminated in a spotlight while the rest of the arena remained shrouded in darkness, and those family members raised the jerseys, displaying the names of those lost.

The fans rose to their feet and broke into applause. So, too, did the players for both teams, standing off to the side. The pain and emotion and grief was still so raw that those involved struggle to recount it.

That night, before the families stepped onto the court and raised the jerseys bearing the names of the 168, a man named Richard Williams sat in that back room where Taylor spoke.

Williams was there because he had been asked by the family of Kimberly Clark, who was a 39-year-old legal assistant for the Housing and Urban Development Department who worked on the eighth floor of the Murrah Building and whose chair resides in the eighth row, if he could attend on their behalf. Williams, a close friend, said he’d be honored. He had worked for the General Services Administration in the same building.

At 9 a.m. that morning in 1995, Williams was in his first-floor office, speaking to a colleague. At that moment, about 75 feet away from him, McVeigh’s yellow Ryder truck was parked in front of the building, holding nearly 5,000 pounds of explosives.

Williams can’t remember exactly what happened next — only that he woke in a hospital bed later that day. His left ear had been nearly severed; he had a deep cut in one leg; his right hand had been crushed; there’d been a huge shard of glass lodged in his cheek; his body had been pierced with hundreds of smaller pieces of glass, concrete and metal.

Doctors had worked through the night. He received 150 stitches. They’d reattached his ear. They’d stitched his scalp together. His wife told him so many tiny shards of glass had been blasted into his head it looked as if glitter filled his hair. Williams didn’t learn about the bombing until two days later, when the medication wore off, and he saw pictures and the footage. He turned to his wife and asked about the children in the daycare, his co-workers, his friends. She told him.

“I lost, in an instant, 116 friends and co-workers,” he says.

Richard Williams, a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing, attended the anniversary event in 2019. He still carries glass in his body from the blast. Mitsu Yasukawa-USA TODAY NETWORK

After the event, and after he returned home to Texas, Williams wanted to write Presti a letter, so he asked his wife, Lynne, to help him do it. She wrote about how much her husband appreciated the event to honor the families of the 168. She mentioned Carson, their grandson, whom Presti met and took a photo with during Russell Westbrook’s basketball camp in Oklahoma City in 2017. By the fall of 2019, Westbrook had been traded to Houston, but Carson still cheered him on, even though he still loved the Thunder, too.

Weeks later, Williams received a handwritten letter on the Thunder’s letterhead.

“Mr. Williams,” it began, “I want to write to extend my thanks for your recent letter. The relationship that is shared between the Thunder and the Memorial is unique and special. There are a thousand lessons to be studied and learned from the events of April 19, 1995.

Wearing the uniform inspired by the Memorial is one way the team can raise awareness of some of those lessons.

Please send my regards to Lynne and let Carson know it’s good to root for Russ so long as he roots just a little louder for the home team.

Thank you again. -Sam.”

Today, Williams lives about 50 miles north of Houston, in Montgomery. He quips that he’s one of four people in Texas who cheer for the Thunder. He watches with his wife, Lynne, his son, Justin, and Carson. “They’re part of home for us,” he says.

He says he thinks often about the police officer who pulled him from the rubble, a man named Terry Yeakey who died a year after the bombing.

Williams still carries glass in his body, and every so often, another shard rises to the surface. “I still have a piece by my right eye,” he says. He keeps the large shards in a bag in a bedroom closet. “A reminder,” he says.

He’s battling throat cancer. He has lost nearly 25 pounds and undergone six rounds of chemotherapy and 35 of radiation. He told people that he survived the 1960s, Vietnam and the Oklahoma City bombing, so he’ll beat cancer, too.

His cancer makes it tough to eat solid foods, or even talk. But on a recent summer afternoon during the playoffs, Williams takes some medication. He says he wants to talk. Before the painkillers subside, Williams has one more thing he wants to say, with all the strength he can muster:

“Go Thunder.”

At 9:02 a.m., on April 19, 1995, 5,000 pounds of explosives leveled nine floors of concrete, steel, glass and people into 7,000 square feet of rubble in the street. More than 12,000 people from across the nation helped with the recovery. From top: AP File Photo, Jim Argo/The Oklahoman and Steve Sisney/The Oklahoman-USA TODAY NETWORK.

TODAY, LOCAL LEADERS talk endlessly about how far Oklahoma City has come, but the city itself began in the most unusual of ways. “We’re one of the only cities with an actual birthday,” Mayor David Holt says. And not just an exact day, but a time: noon, April 22, 1889, when a bugle and cannon fire signaled the start of a land run.

In one day, Oklahoma City’s population soared from zero to 10,000. By the time statehood arrived in 1907, Oklahoma ranked first nationally in oil production. But, over time, the state has come to be defined by the Osage murders, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Dust Bowl, the endless spate of devastating tornadoes, the bombing.

“It was a place where bad things happened,” says Keating, the former governor.

Even its main airport is named after someone who died in a plane crash: Will Rogers.

Then, in the early 1980s, the oil and gas industry went bust, leading to the failure of 47 local banks.

By the early 1990s, there wasn’t much to Oklahoma City. “It was dead,” says Russell Claus, the urban planner who helped rebuild downtown after the bombing.

But in December 1993, the city passed a one-cent sales tax to help fund nine major projects, including an arena, even though there was no major professional team to call it home. It opened in 2002, and a few years later, whenever Mick Cornett flew out of town and introduced himself as the mayor of Oklahoma City, all anyone wanted to talk to him about, still, was the bombing.

“Here I am trying to improve our economy, but all the emotions about us are sympathy, and you can’t build an economy around sympathy,” Cornett says. “People felt sorry for us, and they felt sorry for me. And that was a tremendous roadblock.”

Cornett, a former sportscaster in Oklahoma City, had always wanted to pursue a major league team for the city and made the case to then-NBA commissioner David Stern.

On a visit to NBA headquarters in New York in 2004, Stern had told Cornett that there wasn’t a team for him. When Cornett returned in 2005, as part of a national media tour in April for the 10th anniversary of the bombing, Stern repeated the message and told him he didn’t need to return.

A few months later, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

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Almost immediately, phones rang throughout Oklahoma City, as conventions and events needed new homes. After a few days, when it became clear the waters wouldn’t recede, Cornett and Stern talked again.

Cornett said that Oklahoma City’s downtown arena had open dates for the New Orleans Hornets’ home games. Stern was interested.

Over the next few days, working with state leaders, Cornett sorted out logistics. He pushed for the team to carry the Oklahoma City name, too — a step toward searing a new identity into a city known before only for tragedy. The NBA agreed; the team name for the time being would be the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets.

Season tickets sold out within hours. When Stern visited early in the season, he saw the packed crowd and pulled Cornett aside. He told him that Oklahoma City was on top of the NBA’s list.

Three years later, a group of Oklahoma City businessmen bought the Seattle SuperSonics, and moved the team to Oklahoma City. Cornett said the NBA initially wanted to name them the Oklahoma Thunder, because there was concern that the team needed statewide support because Oklahoma City wasn’t a large enough market.

Cornett said no. “I was insistent that it had to be Oklahoma City,” he says. The team had a name, he said, but no culture.

It was then that the 30-year-old transplant from Massachusetts began to build one.

“Sam immediately started using the bombing memorial and those experiences as part of what would make the culture of this franchise different from all of the others,” Cornett says. “I didn’t see that coming.”

One mile and seven blocks separate the events of 30 years ago and the Thunder’s arena, where Presti and the Thunder serve as a bridge between the past and present. Kirby Lee/Getty Images

THIS MAY, THEOklahoma Hall of Fame, which dates to 1927, announced its latest class of inductees, a group of seven, to be inducted at a ceremony in November.

Presti was among them.

“That’s a big deal,” Taylor says. “The Oklahoma Hall of Fame is kind of insular. It’s old. But it shows how the community and the state have wrapped their arms around Sam and said, ‘Thank you for what you’ve done.’

“The team has changed this city.”

Countless city officials say the same. In 1993, Oklahoma City featured two downtown hotels; now, there are 23, and a 24th is under construction. It has grown from the 37th-largest city in 1970 in the U.S. to the 20th as of the 2020 census. Numerous historic neighborhoods have been revitalized: Bricktown, Deep Deuce, Automobile Alley.

Seven events from two sports in the 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Oklahoma City.

Last year, construction plans were announced for the tallest building in the U.S., a 1,907-foot Oklahoma City skyscraper — the figure a nod to Oklahoma’s statehood — called the Legends Tower.

In July, U.S. News and World Report ranked Oklahoma City the “Best Big City to Live” among 859 American cities with populations of 499,000 or more. And local voters continue to pass one-cent-sales-tax initiatives to fund new projects throughout the city, including, in December 2023 — and by a decisive 71% margin — one to help fund a new arena for the Thunder.

The state-of-the-art, 750,000-square foot arena, is slated to cost $900 million and be finished in 2028. It will be designed by the Kansas City-based architecture firm Manica, which designed new Wembley Stadium in West London, Chase Center in San Francisco, Reliant Stadium in Texas, Camp Nou in Spain and several others.

Last fall, Manica officials spent two hours with Oklahoma City and Thunder officials at the Thunder’s offices at the Paycom Center to discuss the design.

Sitting in a spacious conference room, facing officials that included Presti and Thunder owner Clay Bennett, David Manica, the firm’s owner, asked the group, “If this building is going to be a reflection of Oklahoma City, what would that look like? What’s important to Oklahoma City?”

“Resiliency,” they said. “Unity.” “Community.” All terms that harkened back to the bombing — and the recovery.

The Japanese art of Kintsugi repairs broken pottery by mending the pieces together with gold, making it stronger than it was before. As they strategize the design, Manica and his team thought often of Kintsugi. They thought about how the bombing shattered Oklahoma City, and about how the people — the gold — rebuilt it to be stronger than it was before.

The day after that meeting, the Thunder arranged for Manica and his team to tour the memorial museum for the first time. Watkins was there. So was Brian Byrnes, a Thunder executive.

When he exited onto the memorial grounds, seeing the chairs, the scarred Survivor Tree, Manica and his team knew they weren’t just designing an arena for the team or for concerts.

They were designing an arena for the entire city.

Top: The team visited the museum in 2014 with Justice Steven Taylor, who sentenced co-conspirator Terry Nichols to 161 consecutive life sentences. Bottom: Before Game 2 of the WCF, Genzer’s three kids got autographs from MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Top: Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. Bottom: Kyle Genzer

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE every home game, Taylor rises from his seat and walks around the arena’s concourse. Taylor has missed very few playoff or regular-season games since the team’s arrival in 2008, and, often, people will recognize him and approach. Many are police officers, firemen, family members and survivors.

“They just want to connect,” Taylor says. “They just want fellowship.”

Five seconds into his walk, amid the crowd, he sees a woman, Kim Neese, and her daughter.

Neese was 28 when she worked in the Oklahoma Water Resources Board across the street, standing in the third-floor doorway of her boss’s office when the bomb hit. Ceiling tiles imploded onto her, walls caved in, windows blew in. She fell to the floor. The men around her were covered in concrete dust and blood. Lacerations split across her back and neck.

Two weeks before, she’d applied for her daughter to go to America’s Kids day care. They were full, they said.

“Justice Taylor!” she says.

“She’s a survivor,” Taylor says, wrapping his arm around her.

Taylor’s son Wilson was an intern for Presti in 2007 and is now the team’s director of logistics. The two talk in the stands before every home game, and, last year, Wilson was named the NBA’s 2023-2024 Equipment Manager of the Year.

Taylor and Presti talk often, and Presti has asked plenty about the bombing and the 2004 Nichols trial. But four years after the team arrived in Oklahoma City, Presti asked Taylor a different question.

Presti wanted to know if Taylor — then the Chief Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court — would be the one to marry Presti and his girlfriend, Shannon.

“Sam, of course,” Taylor replied. “I’d be honored.”

And so, on Aug. 18, 2012, in yet another bond between the Thunder and the defining event in the city in which they reside, Taylor presided over Presti’s wedding. It was a small affair — attended by immediate family, with roughly a dozen present — inside the Oklahoma Supreme Court located on the second floor inside the State Capitol in Oklahoma City.

After his walk around the arena, Taylor takes his seat atop section 120. He knows that across the way, in section 105, there’s Ron Norick, the mayor at the time of the bombing, the mayor when the sales tax was passed that built the arena, the mayor whose name is on the street in front of the Paycom Center.

That morning, police escorted Norick to the site, and officials showed him the 28-foot diameter hole in the pavement, about seven feet deep, having torn through 14 inches of asphalt and 7 inches of concrete.

Aven Almon crouches at the memorial chair of her daughter, Baylee, who was killed in the bombing. The photograph of firefighter Chris Fields carrying Baylee, who had just turned 1, out of the rubble won a Pulitzer Prize. Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images

Over in section 117, there’s Keating, the governor at the time, who helped create a $6 million fund for victims. If a parent lost their child, the fund covered the burial and provided counseling. If a child lost a parent, then the fund covered college and graduate school, anywhere they wanted to go.

Up on the second level, popping into a suite to see friends, there’s Watkins, head of the memorial museum. Her father, Larry Ferguson, a publisher of Oklahoma newspapers and a state representative, had died less than a week earlier. He was 87. Among the first people to call her was Presti. He did the same in 2022, when her mother died. A few days after that, Presti drove 100 miles and 1½ hours to attend the funeral in Cleveland, Oklahoma.

Standing guard over sections 108 and 109 is Master Sergeant John Fiely, who has worked security at Thunder games for five seasons and worked with the Oklahoma City Police Department for 38 years. He was a first responder on April 19, 1995. When Fiely arrived at the site, he saw nine floors of concrete and steel and glass and people pancaked down into 7,000 square feet of rubble in the street.

Refrigerated semi-trucks arrived to serve as a temporary morgue. Over his six days, Fiely and a team set about trying to identify remains, looking for wallets, ID cards.

He was tasked with identifying 27 people who were inside, including two children from the daycare. It was a federal building, he says, so there were fingerprint records on the adults, but not on the children.

Fiely and a colleague needed to drive out to separate houses — one in north Oklahoma City and one in nearby Edmond, just outside the city — and go inside the homes of parents to gather DNA samples from a pacifier or anything that could help identify them.

By the time their cars arrived in those driveways, the parents already knew. They had known for days. “As soon as the bomb went off,” Fiely says, “those babies’ rooms became memorials.”

The parents didn’t want anyone inside, he says, especially the mothers.

“Here I am in a police uniform, going in, and the husband has to be holding the wife back, and they were screaming, ‘Get out of my baby’s room! Get out of my baby’s room!'”

He looks down onto the court.

“I can still remember the mothers’ screams.”

Sara Sweet’s father was killed in the bombing. She was a senior at Oklahoma State when it happened. She took her nephew, Eli, to the memorial before Game 7 of the NBA Finals and draped her dad’s chair in Thunder blue. Courtesy Sara Sweet

AT 4:30 P.M. ON June 22, about 2½ hours before Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Thunder and the Pacers, with the Thunder on the cusp of a championship in a city on edge to celebrate, Sara Sweet and her 11-year-old nephew, Eli Moore, drive to the memorial.

The sun is shining, the city abuzz with nervous excitement. Sweet and her nephew walk to her father’s chair. W. Stephen Williams — known by his friends as Steve — worked on the first floor as an operations supervisor for the Social Security Administration. She was a 22-year-old senior at Oklahoma State University when it happened. It took 12 days for confirmation to arrive. He was 42.

Nine days earlier, on June 13, with the Thunder trailing the Pacers 2-1 in the Finals, she was thinking about the team, and about Presti, and decided to write him a note.

Sweet shared what sports meant to her father, and to her, and how they watched games together growing up, and how they were in the stands in 1993 when Oklahoma State star Bryant Reeves sank an improbable 45-foot buzzer-beater during an overtime win against Missouri, and about what a good dad her father was, and she mailed it.

Four days later, on June 17, with the Thunder now leading the Pacers 3-2, her doorbell rang. She saw a letter propped up on her mailbox. It was from Presti, a handwritten note.

Sara,

I’m beyond grateful for your note and deeply moved by what you chose to share with me. Although I’m not originally from Oklahoma, the values and essential goodness resonated with me as soon as I arrived.

It is my hope that when you watch the Thunder, what you see is a reflection of the values in sporting form.

Everyone is on the team here in a literal sense. Your father sounds like a wonderful person. I’m hopeful my daughters will feel as strongly and lovingly about our special times together as they reflect back.

Sincerely, Sam

She couldn’t believe it. She checked her Ring app, and there Presti was.

“I’ll keep that note forever,” she says.

She stands at her father’s chair. In a blue Thunder shirt, and her nephew, in a Gilgeous-Alexander jersey, she places a blue Thunder shirt over the back of it, along with a message she wrote in black sharpie on the front:

Dear Dad,

Thank you for teaching me to be a good fan — loyal and supportive.

I miss you each day. But today is hard. I wish we could cheer for the Thunder together. You would get so much joy from this team. Win or lose, they are the best team, and this is the best city.

Let’s Go Thunder!

Love, Sara and Eli

6-22-25

Over time, Oklahoma has come to be defined by the Osage murders, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Dust Bowl, devastating tornadoes, the bombing. For the past 17 years, the Thunder have sought to honor that history — and add to it. Logan Riely and David L. Nemec//NBAE via Getty Images

BEFORE GAME 7 begins, and before Oklahoma native Kristin Chenoweth delivers a rousing rendition of the national anthem, Ronnie Fields steps into the spotlight at center court.

The Thunder are the only team in the league to have a prayer as part of its pregame ceremony, and, over the years, a common theme from those delivering it is to cite the Oklahoma Standard.

Fields, a pastor at the First Christian Church in Guthrie, 30 miles north of the city, knows those ideals well. He lost his mother, Carrol, in the bombing. She worked on the ninth floor. Her chair sits in the ninth row.

He was 21 then, a fourth-year student at the University of Oklahoma (OU). He had visited the Murrah building several times, including the day before.

After the Thunder lost Game 6 in Indianapolis, Fields received a text from Candace Coonrod, the Thunder’s manager for live production and game day experience. She wanted to know if he could deliver the invocation before Game 7. He immediately said yes.

He’d delivered invocations at Thunder games since 2011, he says, usually a few times each season. This time would be different.

Standing in the spotlight, in a blue polo, he holds a piece of paper in his left hand, a microphone in his right, takes a breath and reads:

Gracious God.

The crowd falls silent.

We thank You for the gift of this game, the unity it brings, and the joy of community.

Bless the athletes, coaches, and fans. And may this be a night of integrity, passion, and sportsmanship.

Amen.

The crowd repeats. Amen.

When Fields returns to his seat in section 213, his wife, Shana, turns to him and takes his hand. “Your mom,” she tells him, “would be really proud of you.”

In June, the Thunder hoisted their first championship in franchise history, led by Presti and his devotion to The Standard. Logan Riely and Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images

AT 9:49 P.M. IT is official — the Thunder are NBA champions.

In a second-floor suite, Watkins pops a bottle of champagne and pours for friends and family. In section 220, Sweet takes in the celebration with her nephew, thinking of her father, tears welling in her eyes.

On the court, a man named Jack Thompson guides NBA commissioner Adam Silver to the quickly assembled stage. Thompson helps lead security for the Paycom Center, where he has worked since 2019.

Before that, he worked for the Oklahoma City Fire Department for more than 28 years. When people ask, and they always do, he will say, yes, he was there. He worked body recovery and search and rescue. He was 26.

He has driven by the memorial countless times since but has never visited. “I can’t do it,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever do it.”

One day, about two years ago, before the arena hosted a G-League game, Thompson arrived at the arena and saw a driverless U-Haul truck parked outside. “How long has that truck been there?” he asked. A staffer wasn’t sure. Thompson knew thousands would enter the arena later that day. “Get on the camera,” he said. “Find out how long they’ve been there.” A bomb squad arrived; they learned that it was a false alarm.

He told his staff it was unacceptable that they didn’t know. “I don’t think you guys understand,” he told them. “I’m going to lose my mind every time I come in here and there’s a truck parked outside this building. Do you remember what happened on April 19th, 1995? You read about it. I lived it.”

He implores his staff. “We’re the Oklahoma Standard,” he tells them. “We can’t drop the ball. We’ve come too far. We can’t let people down.”

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Sixteen days before the Thunder’s title-clinching win, Silver had looked out the window of his room at the Citizen, a mixed-use building that rises exactly 168 feet high in honor of the victims, and peered across the street at the memorial.

He was 32 when the bombing happened, living in New York City, working for the NBA, and he remembered the around-the-clock news coverage — the search and rescue, the manhunt, then-President Bill Clinton’s speech at the prayer service in Oklahoma City four days later.

Over the years, Silver had come to understand how deeply both Presti and Bennett cared about the memorial and the team’s bond to it. But Silver himself had never taken the tour.

Bennett recommended they take it together, which they did on the morning of June 6, hours after Game 1 between the Pacers and the Thunder. The two met inside the museum, where Watkins walked them through.

“As a New Yorker, I also saw many similarities with how the exhibits are structured at the 9/11 Memorial, which no doubt was inspired by how Oklahoma City dealt with their own tragedy,” Silver told ESPN.

When Silver left, he understood how the bombing and the recovery were core to the city’s identity, and to the team itself.

Standing in front of Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Presti, Silver addresses the team — and what they built.

He begins. “To the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team-first mentality, homegrown All-Stars, and a very special culture … “

Thunderous chants of “O-K-C” rain down onto them, along with a blizzard of orange and blue confetti, as players adjust shirts that say, “Won for the City.”

Later that night, after the arena and celebration empties into the streets, Thompson returns to the court.

He was born and raised in Oklahoma City. His nephew, Daniel Orton, played for the Thunder. He knows the state has, for 30 years, been known for the one thing he can’t leave behind.

He pulls a handful of confetti into a Ziploc bag. “Now,” he says to himself, “we’re world champions.”

As confetti rained down after the team’s championship win, Thunder players wore shirts that read, “Won for the City.” Channing Holloway and Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images

TWO DAYS LATER, at about 10:40 a.m. on June 24, as Sweet finishes brunch with a friend across the street from the memorial, she walks across the street to get in position.

The parade is about to begin. People line the street in front of the memorial, a dozen rows deep on both sides, and Sweet stands near a fence next to the 9:03 West Gate — where visitors have long left tokens honoring those lost: crosses, teddy bears, children’s shoes, photos of the 168.

On both sides of the memorial, banners hang honoring the Thunder and Presti’s tradition of making it the first stop for players and staff: “We are honored your journey starts here!” the banners read.

Jimmy Do, the Thunder’s photographer, studied the parade route the night before, knowing there was one key photo he hoped to take.

He knew the area around the memorial, having lived nearby at the Regency, a 24-story residential building, where officials found the gnarled axle of the Ryder truck, which had flown 575 feet from the bomb’s crater and contained a partial VIN, making it the first piece of evidence in the sprawling manhunt that ultimately led to McVeigh.

As more buses near the memorial, players exit the vehicles and enter the streets, approaching the edges and interacting with the fans, spraying champagne, and Presti, whose own bus is one of the last in the parade, looks on from the back, watching his players come eye to eye with fans, the connection to them, and their history, steeled forever.

The parade is the largest gathering in the city’s history, with an estimated 500,000 in attendance in a city whose 2024 population is listed at nearly 713,000.

By midday, the sprawling celebration reaches the 70-acre Scissortail Park near the arena. There, Holt, the mayor, addresses a crowd of thousands in Thunder blue.

“Today is for the families who lost so much on April 19, 1995, who find solace in the joys of this journey.” He proclaims July 1 to be Sam Presti Day.

“Sam is the transplant, but he has really immersed himself in the culture and history of our city,” Holt told ESPN. “He’s really become an Oklahoman at this point.”

Thunder photographer Jimmy Do revealed a photograph of this year’s championship parade as part of an exhibit at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. The team shared it on social media, with a caption: “In the heart of celebration, #WeRemember” Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum

After Holt finishes his speech, Do, the team’s photographer, returns to his desk at the Thunder’s corporate office at the arena, imports his photos into his computer, and he sees it, with a timestamp of 11:23:19.

In the foreground, there is the team bus, with “2025 Champions” written up high, and, fittingly with the No. 30 — the number of years it had been — in the window.

On top, there is Gilgeous-Alexander, his arms out wide, as if in homage and celebration to the mission statement inscribed on the 9:03 West Gate facing him:

“We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.”

All around the bus, a scene of celebration: cheering fans, confetti fluttering down.

In his office, Do studies the photo, everything in focus, and relief washes over him. At 8:30, the team posts it to its social media accounts with the caption: “In the heart of celebration, #WeRemember.”

It instantly goes viral — the city’s biggest tragedy and triumph captured in one frame.

“I’m just proud that I happened to be there,” Do says, “in the right place at the right time.”

Presti shares the photo, too. “That one is going to be around forever,” he later says.

The team donates the photo — and the license to reproduce and sell it — to the memorial.

Fifteen days later, the memorial museum holds a ceremony on its second floor. About 50 people attend, including survivors, first responders and family members of the 168, and they watch Watkins and Do pull a black curtain covering a 36-by-54-inch exhibit affixed to a column next to the window that looks out onto the memorial grounds.

It is titled “HOPE Wins!” and it features Do’s photo.

Beneath it are five smaller photos from the parade, one featuring Bennett pumping his fist atop a bus, one featuring Presti waving to fans atop a bus, and another of the shirt with the message that Sweet placed on her father’s chair on the afternoon of Game 7.

The museum includes the Gallery of Honor, where portraits of the 168 victims are displayed. Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum

INSIDE THE MUSEUM on a midsummer day, Watkins looks out the window and down Robinson Avenue, where one mile and seven blocks separates the Thunder’s arena from the events of 30 years ago, and where Presti and the Thunder serve as a bridge between past and present.

Presti’s annual postseason news conference, held eight days after the team’s championship win, lasts nearly two hours, but he brings up the bombing within the first five minutes.

He talks about the team’s journey, and how it didn’t have a team name when it arrived, or a logo, or a place to practice.

“What we did have immediately was a connection to the community that we represent, and that is something that hasn’t changed since we’ve arrived here,” he says. “But the city itself and the state itself are the reasons why we exist. They’re the reasons why we’re here. The ultimate rebuilding job was done by the city leadership many, many years ago. That’s Mayor Norick and Mayor Cornett. They’re the people that allowed the city to recover from 1995 and the tragedy that occurred here, and put in place the vision for the city to be able to have an NBA team one day in the future.”

When the team arrived in 2008, people in the city would talk to the players about the bombing, its connection to the team and how the team helped the city and the people living there heal. At times, it made Collison uncomfortable.

“It’s almost stolen valor,” he says. Years passed and the appreciation never stopped. “Over time, I really do feel like that’s how the city feels — that somehow this experience of Oklahoma City growing from this devastating thing that happened, this awful thing that happened, and the changes in the city and the team and the positivity that the team has brought over time — I do feel a lot more comfortable talking about that because I really do think that’s how a lot of people feel.”

He recognizes the team’s role in keeping the memory alive for so many who fear being left behind. “That’s a really great thing to help keep,” Collison says.

As Watkins looks out, a framed 2019-20 Thunder City Edition jersey is displayed in a case just a few feet away. The column that features Do’s photo from the parade is too.

By this point in the tour, players have passed by the pocket knife that one surgeon used to help complete an above-the-knee amputation of a survivor trapped in the rubble. They have passed by an exhibit sharing the story of a blind man who ran a snack bar and led several people to safety. They have passed by the yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis that McVeigh used as a getaway car. They have passed by a wall clock whose hands are forever frozen at 9:02.

And they have passed the Gallery of Honor, where portraits of the 168 are displayed, along with artifacts chosen by their families.

In the display case honoring Genzer’s mother, Jamie, is a butterfly brooch. She loved butterflies, and Genzer has often noticed them fluttering around him in random moments when he’s at the memorial. One year, on the anniversary, he and his wife visited his mother’s chair. As they stood there, a butterfly approached. His wife was pregnant with their second son, and the butterfly landed right on her stomach.

But before the players leave, before anyone leaves, there is a video that plays on a screen near the elevator that delivers everyone to the ground floor. It contains footage that they shot during the COVID-19 pandemic of speakers describing the Oklahoma Standard.

One of those speakers defines acts of service and honor. He said they are simple: an hour at a food bank, a visit to the memorial museum, closing your neighbor’s garage if it’s left open.

Sam Presti explains that these are things Oklahomans do every day.

The Survivor Tree, an elm nearly a century old that was embedded with shrapnel from the blast, was the only tree in the area that survived the bombing. Its trunk and branches are still charred. Saplings from it have been planted across the country. Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum

AFTER THE LAST parade bus recedes in the distance, Sweet turns and looks back at her father’s chair, still bearing the blue Thunder shirt with the message she had written on the day of Game 7.

A photo of it has since gone viral, and her phone hasn’t stopped buzzing.

As the sun beats down, she stands in the shade of a pine tree, maybe 10 feet away.

She watches as dozens of people approach her dad’s chair and read the message. One woman weeps as she leans in. No one seems to know that the person who wrote the message is standing right next to them.

As the parade crowd begins to disperse, the Field of Empty Chairs is full of people walking through. Many hustle home, seeking to escape the heat, but just as many take their time, lingering among the chairs, reading the names.

Sweet looks on as small children walk among the small chairs in the second row and look up to their parents and ask about this place.

She looks on as the parents lean down, in quiet, somber voices, and the story of what happened is born anew.

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