How the OKC Thunder prepared for the perils of being an NBA champion
There was no motivational speaker, and no catchy slogan, to help frame the Oklahoma City Thunder’s quest to repeat as NBA champions as they began this preseason.
“They’re not bringing in David Goggins,” Chet Holmgren explained, and then he began to give the broad strokes of how the second-youngest team in league history to win an NBA title is approaching the task of becoming the first team to win back-to-back NBA titles since the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018.
There have been ‘team film sessions and team addresses, I guess you could say,” Holmgren told USA TODAY Sports before a Thunder preseason game against the Bucks last week in Milwaukee, but that isn’t much different than how the Thunder operated in years past. The themes are new, however.
They’re not centered on the singular goal of winning a title like Oklahoma City just accomplished by beating the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals. They instead focus on what happened to the NBA teams that didn’t experience another celebration the next year, and how to avoid that fate.
“I just think we have a lot of realists on the team,” Holmgren said. “We understand we did something special last season, but we also understand that’s last season and it doesn’t do anything for us this season. If anything, it makes this season harder because you have that title next to your name and everyone’s kind of measuring themselves up to that, so they’re gunning for you.”
OKC Thunder: ‘Most promising core’ and massive payday
These are uncharted waters for the Thunder, who will go through their NBA championship ring ceremony and face the Houston Rockets on Tuesday, Oct. 21, as part of the NBA’s opening night of the 2025-26 season. They will be the decided title favorites with a roster that’s the envy of the entire league. The Thunder were just named the ‘most promising young core’ in the league in the NBA’s annual GM survey for the third year in a row.
Their rapid and remarkable rebuild is complete, with an array of intriguing young role players and future first-round draft picks still available to trade if they want to make more moves.
Their star, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has his own signature shoe line, and made recent appearances on ‘The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’ and the cover of GQ Magazine after joining Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal as the fourth player in NBA history to win league MVP, NBA Finals MVP and the scoring title in the same season.
Their front office, meanwhile, is doling out money like never before to ensure the core of the Thunder’s first championship team can stay together for the foreseeable future.
Gilgeous-Alexander signed a 4-year, $285-million max extension in July. Five days later, All-Star sidekick Jalen Williams signed his own 5-year max rookie extension that could be worth as much as $287 million. Holmgren also agreed to a five-year extension worth nearly $240 million on the same day. Those new deals are in addition to giving Alex Caruso a 4-year, $81-million contract extension last December after acquiring him via trade. The Thunder also signed center Isaiah Hartenstein to a 3-year, $87 million contract via free agency before last season.
The implication is clear as other teams adjust to major injuries and the financial sticking points of the NBA’s more restrictive collective bargaining agreement. As Gilgeous-Alexander put it simply at the Thunder’s media day last month: ‘It would suck to lose the NBA championship in 2026.’
‘It’s definitely not going to get stale, but we also have to understand that if we want to be successful we have to play for more than things that happened this summer,’ Holmgren added. ‘Winning a championship, obviously signing an extension and being able to take care of your family, it’s extremely important. But if that’s all you’re playing for, you’re not going to be very successful beyond that. We have to understand that not everyone has gotten that and we have to play for each other and when everybody’s successful, everybody gets rewarded. You have to have a level of selflessness knowing that everybody is trying to maximize their window.’
Why some NBA champions don’t go back-to-back
League history suggests those plans can easily go awry. There have been 13 teams to win back-to-back NBA championships since 1947, with the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls the only organizations to have achieved the feat multiple times.
This is now the longest gap between repeat NBA champions since the league went 19 years between the end of the Celtics’ dominating run with Bill Russell through the 1960s and the back-to-back NBA championships won by Magic Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers in 1987 and 1988. The reasons vary.
The Celtics lost Jayson Tatum to injury last season during their title defense. The Denver Nuggets lost key depth from their 2023 NBA championship squad, and, as it turned out, were in the midst of internal turmoil that eventually led to the firing of both General Manager Calvin Booth and coach Michael Malone at the end of last season. Golden State hasn’t finished better than sixth in the Western Conference standings since winning the 2022 NBA title and couldn’t pull off a repeat in 2016 despite winning a league-record 73 games in the regular season.
The Milwaukee Bucks blew a 3-2 series lead to the Celtics without Khris Middleton in the 2022 Eastern Conference semifinals after winning it all in 2021. The Lakers, featuring Caruso, won the NBA championship in the bubble in 2020 only to lose in the first round the next year as the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference after LeBron James and Anthony Davis missed significant regular-season action due to injury. The Toronto Raptors watched star Kawhi Leonard leave via free agency after winning the 2019 NBA Finals.
The San Antonio Spurs, with former coach Gregg Popovich, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, never had back-to-back titles among their five championship runs. All-time greats like Larry Bird, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain never repeated as champions, either.
The 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, the only team younger than the 2024-25 Thunder to win an NBA championship, are also a cautionary tale. Portland won 50 of its first 60 games the next season, but lost to the eventual champion Seattle SuperSonics in the playoffs after league MVP Bill Walton suffered a foot injury that altered the rest of his playing career.
“There’s some things that you have to learn through the fire,” Caruso said. “We got a little taste of it towards the end of last season when people started playing better than their records indicated or better than their percentages shooting-wise. That’s probably the biggest thing. Being ready for the unexpected.”
This is perhaps why Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault keeps mentioning how pleased he is that the entire team showed up to training camp in shape this year. He doesn’t want the internal dynamics and principles that got the Thunder to this place to change even in the face of a different set of circumstances and challenges. ‘That’s served us well,’ Daigneault emphasized. ‘It creates a level of familiarity for everybody.’
There’s an awareness of how hard the Thunder’s mixture of stars, depth and chemistry is to replicate, and how easy it can be to lose in the NBA.
Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers remembers calling Michael Jordan to pick his brain on how to repeat after Rivers led the Celtics to an NBA championship in 2008. Jordan, as Rivers recalled last week before facing the Thunder during a preseason game, responded with some ‘colorful’ words of wisdom that also strike at the very reason why Oklahoma City is as well positioned as it is moving forward.
‘It’s getting your role players to be role players again,’ Jordan told Rivers.
‘They’ve been on the road with the freaking trophy, having freaking parades all summer, and now you’ve got to get them back playing the role they did,’ Rivers said. ‘The Thunder last year, when you think about all the young guys and yet they had young guys who have bought into the roses, it’s pretty amazing what Mark has done there.’
Now, they just have to do it all over again.
