FRESH OFF BECOMING the second-youngest championship workforce in NBA historical past, the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder gathered round a desk stocked with celebratory drinks and turned their consideration to sage veteran Alex Caruso.
Caruso’s voice had carried loads of weight within the Thunder’s locker room since he arrived by way of a commerce the earlier summer season. At 31, he was the oldest participant on Oklahoma Metropolis’s roster and the one one who owned an NBA championship ring, which he had flashed across the apply facility early within the season as a motivational tactic.
Caruso was additionally the one participant within the room who had a clue about learn how to pop a champagne bottle.
In truth, for Jalen Williams and Jaylin Williams, this is able to be the primary time they’d ever taken a lot as a sip of alcohol. Their inexperience, in addition to that of a few of the Thunder’s different children, quickly turned obvious.
After taking a head rely, Caruso confirmed his teammates learn how to take away the foil from the bottle, undo the steel and get the cork prepared — after which a number of corks popped prematurely. There have been a pair extra false begins on the second try earlier than the Thunder managed to pop the corks in sync on their third strive, setting off a hilariously tame title celebration.
“It was a superb first strive,” Caruso mentioned on the rostrum that evening, eradicating his championship cap and rubbing his bald head whereas smiling wryly. “We’ll get some relaxation, reset, attempt to go once more subsequent 12 months and see if we will do it once more.
“We’ll be higher. We’ll be higher subsequent 12 months.”
That form of progress most likely wasn’t fairly what Oklahoma Metropolis basic supervisor Sam Presti had in thoughts a number of months later, when he held his annual preseason assembly with the native media within the interview room down the Paycom Middle hallway, however the group sustaining an “obsession with enchancment” was the overarching theme of the session.
How a lot enchancment could be anticipated after a franchise-record 68-win season and title run? A lot, in response to the face of the franchise and different core gamers, declaring that the pair of playoff collection through which the Thunder had been pushed to seven video games present loads of alternative to nitpick.
“I do not assume as a bunch we performed our greatest basketball in that playoff run,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander advised ESPN. “And I do not assume as a participant, I performed my finest basketball for the entire run. Granted, it is basketball, it should occur — however I had droughts, and there is a purpose why I had droughts. We had droughts as a workforce, and there is a purpose why we had droughts and meltdowns and issues like that.
“We have now to be taught from these experiences and be higher.”
There definitely have not been any indicators of a championship hangover, because the Thunder opened the season by profitable their first eight video games, the very best begin within the franchise’s 18-year Oklahoma Metropolis tenure. The Thunder have a league-best 11-1 file getting into Wednesday evening’s recreation in opposition to the Los Angeles Lakers regardless of All-NBA wing Jalen Williams having but to return from summer season wrist surgical procedure, amongst different accidents to key gamers.
A relentless progress mentality fueled the Thunder’s speedy ascent from a rebuilding franchise to reigning champions. They’re decided to not deviate from that mindset regardless of what coach Mark Daigneault refers to because the “distraction” of being champions and the “challenges” that include success.
“No matter we would like, we have needed to make occur,” Presti mentioned as he was wrapping up his 12-minute opening assertion in his late September media availability. “On this case, making it occur means having the self-discipline and humility to show the web page and push ourselves ahead.
“This method matches us finest as a result of in Oklahoma, we’re builders. We aren’t guardians. We’re not guarding or defending the previous. That is over, and it is ours.
“We’re pursuing our future and no matter comes subsequent.”
The Thunder need to be grasping as they proceed rising.
“The way in which I see — clearly it is a completely different scale — but it surely’s straightforward to do one factor one time,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned. “Steph Curry’s not the best shooter as a result of he made one shot. He made pictures over and over and over.
“I do not need to win only one. I need to be often called a winner. So it takes a number of instances.”
“HOW DO YOU eat an elephant?” Daigneault asks. “One chunk at a time.”
It is an outdated proverb the coach usually makes use of for example the significance of committing to a methodical, every day routine in pursuit of huge ambitions.
It is the method that Presti used whereas patiently developing a contender, ignoring any temptation to bundle a bunch of the additional first-round picks in his pocket to swing for a celebrity in a quick-fix commerce. The franchise as a substitute prioritized inside growth, overseen since 2020 by Daigneault, whose solely earlier head coach expertise was 5 seasons on the helm of Oklahoma Metropolis’s G League workforce.
Daigneault is aware of the Thunder’s core rules of professionalism and laborious work aren’t distinctive. Each NBA franchise asks the identical issues of their gamers. However treasured few have a face of the franchise who epitomizes these rules in addition to Gilgeous-Alexander.
“Your gamers carry these issues to life, and your highest gravity gamers have the most important affect on that,” Daigneault mentioned. “Our workforce collectively has completed an unbelievable job of bringing it to life, however he is bought the form of gravity that the minute he isn’t dedicated to a kind of issues, it does not have the identical upside.
“Fortuitously for us, he is been a man that every one alongside from the start and with the ups and downs — we misplaced loads of video games early on, after which he is had a really speedy ascent since then — he is stayed completely in character on these issues and dedicated to these issues. And it is empowered all of these issues.”
Luguentz Dort is the lone participant on the Thunder roster whose Oklahoma Metropolis tenure is so long as Gilgeous-Alexander’s, and he has an unimaginable developmental success story in his personal proper, blooming from an undrafted rookie with a bricklaying bounce shot in 2019 to an All-Defensive choice who shot 41.2% from 3-point vary final season. He is a part of a committee of under-the-radar acquisitions who’ve emerged as core gamers for Oklahoma Metropolis, together with second-round picks Aaron Wiggins, Ajay Mitchell and Jaylin Williams, in addition to waiver wire pickup Isaiah Joe. Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein had comparable profession paths earlier than coming to the Thunder in summer season 2024 as established veteran, high-caliber position gamers who had been the ultimate items to Oklahoma Metropolis’s championship puzzle.
All of them level to Gilgeous-Alexander’s unwavering work ethic as an important factor of the franchise’s ethos.
“He nonetheless seems like he desires to make the workforce. That is simply his method,” Dort mentioned. “That is how he competes. He is at all times been like that.
“The truth that he is the chief of our workforce and nonetheless approaching it that manner in Yr 8 now, it simply units the tone for the remainder of us. It is like, man, we bought to match that vitality.”
Gilgeous-Alexander arrived in Oklahoma Metropolis as a part of the Paul George commerce — although the historic haul of first-round capital was the headliner within the return — and was thought-about an intriguing prospect coming off a second-team All-Rookie marketing campaign. He honed his craft in relative anonymity through the tough, early years of the rebuild, when the Thunder completed second to final within the West in consecutive seasons.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s standing has modified drastically previously few years as he has been in a position to show his growth in a aggressive surroundings he helped create.
Gilgeous-Alexander made his first All-Star look in 2023, his fifth 12 months within the league and fourth in Oklahoma Metropolis, and in addition was a first-team All-NBA choice then. He completed second in MVP voting the next season, when the Thunder turned the youngest No. 1 seed in NBA historical past. He swept the MVP awards — common season, convention finals and NBA Finals — and gained the scoring title final season whereas releasing his first signature shoe with Converse.
“One of many particular qualities that he has is his amnesia to success,” Caruso mentioned. “He always desires to be a greater model of himself, win extra, and the competitiveness of that’s contagious.”
Maybe as importantly, Gilgeous-Alexander avoids getting caught up by grandiose potentialities sooner or later.
For instance, with the Thunder coming off a 68-win season and off to a good higher tempo, questions on whether or not they can attain the 70-win milestone and even break the 2015-16 Warriors’ file of 73 wins will inevitably begin swirling. It does not advantage far more than a shrug from Gilgeous-Alexander.
“Actually and actually, all that stuff is cool, however when you do not win [the championship], it does not matter,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned whereas strolling to the bus after a comeback win over the LA Clippers Nov. 4 that improved Oklahoma Metropolis to 8-0. “That is all we would like.
“The issues we would like are so difficult and so laborious to get. Once you simply concentrate on the easy issues and the little issues, you may search for and be there sooner or later. However the group makes it really easy. There isn’t any drama round us. Nothing goes on apart from us having enjoyable and taking part in basketball.”
GILGEOUS-ALEXANDER PURPOSEFULLY put the Michael Jordan Trophy, awarded to the league’s MVP, out of sight and out of thoughts after receiving it the night between the primary two video games of final season’s Western Convention finals.
He did not need the shine of 1 accomplishment he had dreamed of since childhood to dim his concentrate on the following lifelong aim inside his grasp.
“In its case, within the basement,” Gilgeous-Alexander recalled of the place he stashed the trophy for the remainder of the playoffs. “All the enjoyment and all the things that comes with that might’ve been placed on maintain had we not gained the championship, in order that’d be my major aim. I needed to put the enjoyable apart for a bit, after which on the finish, it was just a little bit sweeter.”
Gilgeous-Alexander left the Magic Johnson Trophy, awarded to the West finals MVP, hidden behind his locker till the offseason.
The Thunder’s championship, nevertheless, is way tougher to cover. The banner hangs over Paycom Middle courtroom, having been raised to the rafters earlier than the season-opening double-overtime win over the Houston Rockets. That was considered one of 34 Thunder video games scheduled to be nationwide broadcasts, which matches the New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors and Lakers for essentially the most within the league, proof of how shiny the highlight out of the blue is in small-market OKC.
“Actually, on the finish of the day, it is simply going to come back right down to how unhealthy we need to prioritize profitable after we have gained,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned. “Everybody on the workforce faces that problem. After we did not win, it was how unhealthy will we need to win? And now, it is simply how unhealthy will we need to win once more?”
The largest risk to the Thunder, the first potential distraction, is the uncertainty of what modifications would possibly happen in 2026. The collective bargaining settlement’s dreaded second apron looms on the horizon because the Thunder’s payroll will soar subsequent season.
Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren — the franchise’s three foundational gamers — aren’t going anyplace. They every signed a max or supermax contract extension within the wake of the championship price nearly $800 million mixed — and extra if Williams triggers the supermax escalators with one other All-NBA choice.
Preserving the core intact would require the Thunder to vault over the second apron, which comes with strict roster-building restrictions and enormous luxurious tax funds. If the franchise decides that avoiding the second apron is a precedence, the Thunder might decline the 2026-27 workforce choices within the contracts of valued position gamers Dort ($18.2 million) and Hartenstein ($28.5 million).
It is a situation each gamers settle for, as they try to not enable their murky futures with the franchise to cloud their minds.
“There’s sure [times] the place you assume, ‘I might by no means think about being some other place,’ however for me, it is proper now,” Hartenstein mentioned, admitting that it may be laborious to maintain the uncertainty from creeping into the again of his thoughts. “How can I be centered on the current second? Then I feel all the things will determine itself out when it is completed. And I feel with the second apron, profitable at all times helps.
“So, if we simply maintain profitable, I feel we will maintain the workforce collectively.”
Dort has solely performed for one NBA franchise and hopes that by no means modifications. He accepts that he can have solely a lot say in that.
“In my head, the way in which I see it’s, management what I can management,” Dort mentioned. “I am on this place now, and I am actually grateful to this workforce, this group gave me an awesome alternative and actually modified my life. The one factor for me is method this season and method the sport. I am attempting not to consider that.
“So I’ll simply do my job after which no matter comes with it, comes with it.”
Presti has been getting ready for this chance for years. That factored into his logic to withstand any temptation to make a quick-fix commerce by bundling a bunch of picks in a splashy deal for a celebrity, opting to patiently assemble a hopefully sustainable supporting forged round Gilgeous-Alexander. He additionally signed a number of gamers to extensions with descending salaries to assist mitigate the influence of the eight-figure contracts being added to the payroll.
“However there’s nothing relative to the second apron that might prohibit us from maintaining anybody on our workforce,” Presti mentioned in September. “The foundations themselves usually are not prohibitive to our capacity to keep up the workforce. The problem is clearly for each workforce that has a ample assortment of expertise is the funds that include that.”
There are a number of monetary components that play within the Thunder’s favor, as Presti factors out. With a lot expertise on rookie contracts, Oklahoma Metropolis hasn’t paid the posh tax in years and is positioned to keep away from it once more this season, a uncommon place for a workforce in its third consecutive marketing campaign as a contender. That implies that by the point the Thunder would cross into the tough repeater tax territory, triggering extraordinarily punitive monetary penalties, the league can have a brand new CBA and probably a special algorithm.
By that time, the Thunder can have a large inflow of income, far past the thousands and thousands generated by deep playoff runs. Oklahoma Metropolis’s new enviornment, which is being constructed throughout the road from the Paycom Middle with solely a $50 million contribution from the Thunder’s possession group, is scheduled to open for the 2028-29 season. The league’s new $77 billion broadcast deal simply started, and the NBA is exploring enlargement potentialities in addition to a league in Europe, each of which might create billions in income for the present groups to separate.
The Thunder’s monetary ache threshold has not been predetermined, in response to Presti. Nor does it have to be earlier than the summer season, particularly not on the expense of the franchise’s prime precedence: the current.
“When you begin wanting too far forward, you begin tripping over stuff that is in entrance of you,” Jalen Williams mentioned.
“This group’s very mature, so we perceive that so many issues can occur and should occur between now and profitable one championship,” Gilgeous-Alexander mentioned. “Attempting to look that far forward, it is nearly foolish. So we do not even actually get to these sort of talks. This s— felt good. Let’s attempt to do it once more.”