What’s next for OKC? Three paths forward for SGA, Thunder

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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.

Will the Thunder repeat as NBA champions? EPA/MANUELA SOLDI SHUTTERSTOCK OUT

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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