If Oklahoma City’s first title run wasn’t scary enough, the future should spook you. NBA dynasties are supposedly dead, but the Thunder may have cracked the code.
Perhaps it was a sign of their profound youth (a defining trait) or maybe of their profound professionalism (their other defining trait), but when the Oklahoma City Thunder at last achieved NBA nirvana, they hardly knew what to do in the moment.
As a raucous championship party broke out around them late Sunday, with confetti fluttering above and “We Are the Champions” blaring through Paycom Center, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and pals didn’t seem to know what to do with their joy. Do we dance? Holler into the rafters like KG? Jump on a scorer’s table like Kobe? Instead, they just sort of bounced and hugged and smiled.
When the party moved to the locker room, they tried to mimic celebrations past, but some of their Champagne corks didn’t fire. There was little spraying or dousing of teammates and coaches and not a single victory cigar in sight. No one leaped into a therapy pool like Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. At one point, the music cut out. Then the lights briefly cut out. The entire locker room celebration lasted maybe two minutes.
“I don’t think they knew how to celebrate,” an NBA staffer remarked, in a comment that was more of a cute observation than a criticism.
But then, nothing about the young Thunder’s fantastic rise or their hard-earned coronation—which they finally secured Sunday, with a 103-91 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals—followed any sort of familiar script.
They reached the NBA’s pinnacle faster than anyone had anticipated, just two years removed from a lottery appearance. They became the league’s youngest champions (average age, 25.6 years old) in nearly a half century. They did it in the league’s third-smallest market, delivering Oklahoma City its first title since luring the franchise from Seattle in 2008. And they did it with a mostly homegrown roster, and with two leading stars drafted outside the top 10.
They won it all Sunday, even though they had just one prior playoff appearance and just one playoff series victory before this spring. And the Thunder earned this title the hard way, having to repeatedly repel the feisty, perpetually underestimated Pacers, who refused to quit, even after they lost star guard Tyrese Haliburton due to an Achilles injury in the first quarter of Game 7.
And they did it with an uncommon steadiness and focus belying their youth. This is a team that never looks rattled or rash or impulsive.
More on Game 7
More on Game 7
“I think the most impressive part is the group that did it,” said Finals MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, who won the honor unanimously after averaging 30.3 points, 5.6 assists, and 4.6 rebounds in the series. “Our togetherness on and off the court, like how much fun we have, it made it so much easier. It made it feel like we were just kids playing basketball. … All the achievements and accolades and things, they don’t even come close to the satisfaction of winning with your brothers and people that you are so close to and want to succeed just as much as you want yourself to succeed.”
With 68 wins and a title, the Thunder just certified themselves as one of the most dominant teams in modern times—and they have a chance now to be the most enduring power of this parity-stricken era.
Let’s be clear: The Thunder should be back on this stage many times in the years ahead. They have all the talent and depth and good vibes you could possibly want, along with the greatest asset of all: time. Gilgeous-Alexander turns 27 next month and is just hitting his prime. Williams, an All-NBA selection in his third season, is just 24. Chet Holmgren, a budding star at center, is just 23. And their key teammates are almost all in their 20s.
NBA dynasties seem passé. To even broach the topic on the night you win your first title might seem gauche. But no one can deny the dreamy possibilities of this Oklahoma City team.
“I haven’t even thought that far ahead,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, in response to a question about the Thunder’s dynasty prospects. “But yeah, we definitely still have room to grow. That’s the fun part of this. So many of us can still get better. … I’m excited for the future of this team.”
Yes, the Thunder are the NBA’s seventh champion in seven years. Yes, we have already seen two presumed dynasties in the making—first Denver, then Boston—crack under the weight of expectations and injuries and punishing new salary-cap rules. The NBA today is engineered for parity, for volatility, for chaos.
But the Thunder, armed with all that talent and youth and more draft capital than any NBA finalist ever—13 first-round picks and 17 second-rounders—are built to withstand those forces.
Yes, Oklahoma City has celebrated a brilliant young team like this before, only to see it dismantled. But the Thunder of 2025 are not the Thunder of 2012, however tempting the comparisons might be.
What team president Sam Presti and his staff have meticulously constructed is truly distinct from any champion the NBA has ever seen—more durable, more buoyant, and, by all indications, more connected and even-keeled, free of domineering personalities, outsize egos, or corrosive agendas. In fact, building this organic, sustainable contender might be one of the most impressive achievements in NBA front office history.
This Thunder team may have risen from the ashes of the Kevin Durant–James Harden–Russell Westbrook era, but the SGA-J-Dub-Chet era looks, feels, and even sounds different—as if Presti set out to build a sharper, sleeker, more enduring version of the original. Which, as it happens, he sort of did.
Before he built an NBA champion, long before he assembled this team, Presti drafted “The Letter.” It was a heartfelt message to fans published in The Oklahoman on July 25, 2019, six days after Presti had shipped Westbrook—a beloved franchise icon and the last tie to the 2012 Finals team—to the Houston Rockets. The trade marked the ending of an era. The Letter—part vision board, part manifesto—foretold a new beginning.
In it, Presti stressed the value of “patience” and “discipline,” the need to avoid “quick fixes” and “instant gratification,” and the challenges of building a contender in a small market. He vowed to “reposition and replenish” the roster. He warned that “things will inevitably get harder,” that the wins would be more difficult to come by for a while. He promised to be “fearless, focused, and relentless.”
“The next great Thunder team is out there somewhere,” Presti wrote, “but it will take time to seize, and discipline to ultimately sustain.”
No one knew it then, but the groundwork had already been laid for a spectacular rebirth. Nine days before the Westbrook deal, Presti had traded All-Star Paul George to the Los Angeles Clippers for a massive haul of players and picks, including a long, wiry, relatively anonymous second-year guard from Canada named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
One of the Clippers’ draft picks would turn into Jalen Williams, taken 12th in 2022. Chet Holmgren would arrive in the same draft, at the no. 2 slot, which the Thunder—true to Presti’s forecast—earned by losing 58 games in the prior season. It took just three years to assemble the three pillars who would lead the Thunder’s revival, and they did it without ever landing a marquee free agent or poaching an established star.
Along the way, Presti unearthed hidden gems like the undrafted Lu Dort, second-round picks like Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe, and opportunistic pickups like Alex Caruso (via trade) and Isaiah Hartenstein (via free agency).
This was a rebuild at blinding speed—from playoffs to lottery to playoffs in a five-year burst. For all of Presti’s gentle pleas for patience, Thunder fans endured just three losing seasons before seeing their team get catapulted back into title contention.
“Age is [just] a number,” Presti told ABC’s Lisa Salters during Sunday’s championship presentation. “Sacrifice and maturity is a characteristic. And these guys have it in spades. And it’s a result. And it’s a privilege to work with these guys, an absolute privilege.”
It is surely too soon to call the Thunder’s young stars a new Big Three; that will depend on Holmgren’s evolution. It is faulty to compare them to OKC’s first group, given that Durant, Westbrook, and Harden were all ball-dominant players who became MVPs. Yet there’s every reason to believe that this trio will endure and thrive in ways their predecessors never could.
This is a superteam of both elite talent and elite temperament. Watch Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams operate on the court. Listen to them at the postgame podium. They speak the same way they play—steadily, thoughtfully, always in control. Gilgeous-Alexander had one technical foul this season and Williams just four. The entire OKC roster combined for 18 techs, the same as Minnesota star Anthony Edwards.
From Presti to coach Mark Daigneault (who rose to prominence after coaching the Thunder’s G League team) to the stars themselves, the Thunder’s key figures are all remarkably and consistently understated. It seems practically baked into the franchise’s DNA.
“A true team,” as Presti said during the trophy presentation. “These guys represent all that’s good. At a young age, they prioritized winning, they prioritized sacrifice.”
This is a champion that lets its game do the talking. That rarely preens or shouts or demands credit or attention. That insists on turning every postgame, on-court interview into a group affair, lest they allow the appearance that any individual is above the collective.
Where the last Thunder contender was built on power, bravado, and soaring self-entitlement, this one exudes humility, thoughtfulness, and self-awareness. And that’s no accident, according to team and league insiders; the Thunder scout for character and demeanor as much as they scout for ballhandling or shooting skills.
It’s hard to imagine Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams waging a passive-aggressive war for control, as Durant and Westbrook once did. It’s hard to imagine any of the current Thunder stars willfully breaking this core up prematurely, as Harden’s thirst for a greater spotlight (and greater salary) once did.
The last Thunder reign was undermined by a punitive new luxury-tax system that prompted Presti to trade Harden. Technically, this Thunder reign could be threatened by an even more punitive system that penalizes high spenders by shackling their ability to make trades or sign players.
Those challenges linger on the not so distant horizon, as Presti stares down a system specifically designed to force great teams to shed talent, to make dynasties nearly obsolete. But no team is better positioned to defy it all.
As the reborn Thunder battled for NBA supremacy at Paycom Center these past few weeks, another rebirth of sorts was unfolding across the street: the methodical demolition of the city’s old convention center, to make room for a $1 billion new arena—a modern-day palace for the city’s new basketball princes.
Like the Thunder roster in 2019, the early stages of this reconstruction are a bit jagged and unsightly.
Civic pride and revival were key themes in Presti’s 2019 letter, which imagined “the rise of another great team” to mirror “the rise of [a] rebuilt downtown,” in both cases providing something “not only great, but enduring.”
“Our goal,” Presti wrote, “is sustainable, long-term, collective excellence.”
Landing Gilgeous-Alexander turned out to be the first and most critical step—even if no one could have known it at the time. But it’s the draft picks Presti acquired in that trade and all the wheeling and dealing in the years since that have given OKC the chance to do the “sustainable, long-term” part.
Most NBA champions win when they are older, with a shorter time horizon ahead of them. Most NBA champions have to sacrifice draft capital to acquire immediate help. And under the current system, NBA champions routinely have to part with key veterans to avoid onerous payroll penalties. But the Thunder are the first NBA champions with a surplus of picks and ultimate optionality. If someone leaves for more money, Presti can quickly replace him with a cheaper option, either via the draft or by using those picks in a trade.
“They’re definitely a force to be reckoned with,” said former Washington Wizards executive Tommy Sheppard. “It’s not the Death Star, but they have done a hell of a job.”
Even as the Thunder closed in on their first title, rivals were already making bold moves to dethrone them. Hours before Game 7, the Houston Rockets—who finished second in the West, with 52 wins—consummated a trade for Durant. Now a busy offseason could further reshape the league and add to OKC’s list of potential challengers. The Lakers have Luka Doncic and LeBron James. The Nuggets will surely reload around Jokic.
But the Thunder will be undaunted. Their three young stars should only keep improving. Their supporting cast should only get stronger. And although payroll rules could force OKC to shed talent, that record-deep well of draft picks means that Presti can always replace pricey vets with cheaper rookies or trade for more hidden gems.
Or Presti can simply keep swapping near-term picks for picks in later years, ensuring that the team always has a cache to draw on when needed. It’s a spectacular, unprecedented luxury for a franchise that’s already won a title.
Nothing in the NBA is forever, of course. But the Thunder might have created the closest thing you can get.
As the on-court celebration neared the one-hour mark on Sunday night, the famously buttoned-up Presti milled about the court, confetti under his feet and a delirious smile on his face. True to form, he declined all interview requests but allowed that he was, simply, “grateful.”
Just how young is the NBA’s new champion? So young that Jalen Williams admitted on the podium, “I just had my first drink.” So young that Jaylin Williams, when he tried a league-sponsored beer in the locker room (his first beer, period), he immediately grimaced and said to anyone listening, “Just give me tequila.”
Caruso, the old man of the Thunder locker room at age 31, and the only player with a previous championship (with the Lakers in 2020), seemed almost embarrassed by his teammates’ lack of party skills. Or, at least, their inability to pop the cork on a Champagne bottle. Apparently, not everyone understood the process of removing the foil and unwinding the metal first.
“We didn’t do it all at the same time until the third try,” Caruso said. “We went through the process a couple times, and eventually we got everybody on the same page. It was a good first try.”
It’s OK, though. If this season has proved anything, it’s that Oklahoma City will get there. The Thunder are young enough to learn and talented enough to be back here many more times. Next time, they might even figure out how to pop a bottle of Champagne.
Howard Beck got his basketball education covering the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers for the L.A. Daily News starting in 1997, and has been writing and reporting about the NBA ever since. He’s also covered the league for The New York Times, Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated. He’s a co-host of ‘The Real Ones.’
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