The Oklahoma City Thunder are a miracle. They acquired their greatest participant, the league MVP, in the most effective trades of all time, a blockbuster that additionally introduced again 5 first-round picks and two choose swaps. They used a type of picks to pick out an All-Star wing who scored 40 factors in Sport 5 of the NBA Finals. After 11 years of successful 44 to 60 video games, they endured solely two dangerous seasons, then ascended to even better heights than they did the final time they went into rebuild mode.
That point, the franchise chosen future MVPs in three consecutive drafts. However this iteration of the Thunder is perhaps much more troublesome to duplicate. Their three stars complement each other superbly and are all between the ages of 23 and 26. Their six All-Protection-caliber gamers span the positional spectrum. No one’s older than 31, and no one value the entrance workplace a giant bundle of draft capital to accumulate. Whereas different groups weigh whether or not or not it is value giving up future picks to chase a championship, the group that won Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday is sitting on an enormous surplus of them. There is no such thing as a precedent for this.
If opposing common managers consider they’ll copy Oklahoma Metropolis’s championship method, they’re fooling themselves. It will be equally silly, nevertheless, to suppose that there is nothing to study from the Thunder. The 2025 champs are gifted sufficient to have competed in any period, however they crossed the end line this yr as a result of they had been constructed to beat obstacles particular to right now’s sport.
On a podcast final month, Philadelphia 76ers common supervisor Daryl Morey stated his group must power extra turnovers and get greater, youthful and extra athletic. The physicality of the sport calls for it.
“It is a full slugfest on the market proper now, one thing resembling the basketball of my youth within the late ’80s, early ’90s,” Morey stated throughout an interview on The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. “And you should get simple baskets, and that is going to return by means of uptempo, offensive rebounding. And also you simply want to have the ability to maintain the excessive stage of depth for an entire sport.”
Morey stated the Sixers weren’t constructed for “the brand new MMA NBA,” citing the increased grabbing and holding that was going uncalled within the playoffs. The Thunder had been. In Lu Dort and Alex Caruso, they’ve two of the league’s premier point-of-attack defenders, and their group protection has apparently put the time period “swarm” into the basketball lexicon. They have not invented a brand new scheme or something, however, within the pace-and-space period, no group has made it harder for opponents to assault the paint.
“We simply have a bunch of men that wish to take the ball from you,” Caruso stated in a latest New York Times Magazine feature by Sam Anderson. “We do not really feel like we’re attempting to cease you from scoring. We really feel like we’re influencing you to provide us the ball.”
The Thunder aren’t as skilled as the typical championship group, however they by no means noticed this as a weak spot. Their youth and depth did not simply enable them to face up to the trials of the common season and the elevated depth of the playoffs — coach Mark Daigneualt weaponized these attributes the entire approach by means of. A few of that is simple: OKC typically performed an especially aggressive model of protection, utilizing its collective pace and size to make opponents as uncomfortable as potential, then turning stops into simple baskets on the opposite finish.
The Thunder could shift shapes, although. Once they performed massive males Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren collectively, they pressured fewer turnovers and weren’t as quick, however they managed the boards and, as Caruso may say, influenced opponents to take tons of lengthy 2s. On Sunday, they began the double-big lineup, however went with out a heart solely for a number of stretches and, for the second sport in a row, got here out of halftime with Caruso in Hartenstein’s place.
“We do not understand how the sport goes to go,” Oklahoma Metropolis coach Mark Daigneault instructed reporters shortly earlier than Sport 7 tipped off. “We simply let it play out the way it does. However I feel one of many strengths of our group this season and the experiences we have had is we have now received video games quite a lot of alternative ways. We have had quite a lot of wins and none of them have been the identical. They’re all completely different. We have found out methods to resolve the puzzle of a sport on quite a lot of completely different nights and that is given us quite a lot of confidence. It retains us current within the competitors.”
At their greatest, the 2024-25 Thunder had been an absolute terror on protection and greater than the sum of their components on offense. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is perhaps the sport’s premier one-on-one creator, however they empowered Jalen Williams and Holmgren to increase their video games and used Hartenstein as an initiator as a result of they wished to be extra unpredictable. They knew that, when playoff video games obtained dirty, they’d nonetheless be capable of lean on Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored 29 factors, dished 12 assists and turned the ball over solely as soon as on Sunday.
“The playoffs are inconvenient,” Daigneault stated. “It is arduous to attain.” Towards elite groups which have studied your each tendency, groups should “win possessions within the mud.” Right now of yr, he stated, “it’s extra about your ground than about your ceiling as a result of, when you get into these collection towards an amazing group, that is what you fall to quite a lot of occasions.”
Oklahoma Metropolis was not flawless en path to the championship — it shot 11 for 40 (27.5%) from 3-point vary within the clincher — however its ground was extraordinarily excessive. It is a testomony to Gilgeous-Alexander’s particular person brilliance, common supervisor Sam Presti assembling a group with all types of choices and Daigneault spending the common season experimenting with them. Whatever the rotation the Thunder used on a given night time, they’d the identical luxurious that final yr’s champs did: There have been no weak hyperlinks on the ground.
Through the Larry O’Brien Trophy presentation, Daigneault described OKC as “an unusual group” and Presti stated the gamers “symbolize all that is good at a younger age: They prioritize successful. They prioritize sacrifice. And it simply type of unfolded in a short time.” Gilgeous-Alexander, the newly named Finals MVP, known as Williams “a once-in-a-lifetime participant” and stated that the award was simply as a lot Williams’ as his personal. Whereas different groups cannot use the Thunder’s roster as a template, they have to perceive how excessive of a bar they should clear now. It isn’t simply OKC that everyone else has to arrange for; it is all of the assessments that OKC handed.
Along with top-tier expertise and a little bit of luck, to be the final group standing you want to have the ability to survive an extended common season, alter to radically completely different playoff opponents, impose your will bodily and win video games on the margins. The Thunder made successful look simple for a lot of their traditionally dominant common season. Their Finals run confirmed how arduous it truly is.