The NBA tips off tonight, and the last preview goes to last season’s top regular-season team and champion: the Oklahoma City Thunder. We’ll break down last year’s stats and results, take a look at their roster and goals for the campaign, spotlight a key player, and offer a prediction on the franchise.
Oklahoma City Thunder 2025-26
How they enter the season
Without any changes other than drafting Thomas Sorber and getting Nikola Topic back. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? The Oklahoma City Thunder spent all summer hearing they’re the best-positioned team since the Golden State Warriors to build a dynasty. But in this current era—opened by the Toronto Raptors in 2019, giving us seven champions in seven seasons for the first time ever—repeating as champion is no easy task.
Last year, their regular-season dominance was historic. They surpassed the best point-differential mark once held by the 1972 Lakers and joined the ranks of the century’s top defenses compared to league average (seven points better than the median defensive rating) and in forcing turnovers.
Jalen Williams will miss tonight’s opener and could sit out a few more games due to his wrist surgery. That’s nothing too alarming for a group that, we should remember, navigated last season’s injuries to Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren without much trouble.
Concepts like maintaining hunger or stagnation shouldn’t apply to champions this young. They’ll face different challenges instead.
The dangers of a radical style
Nothing stays the same in sports or in life. What seemed undeniable yesterday evolves today. The NBA is in the midst of a shift in playing styles. Full-court pressure is in vogue, some teams are eyeing the pick-and-roll with skepticism, and defense is cool again. In a season where offensive efficiency dipped for the first time since 2021 (a rarity since the 2015 explosion of offense), OKC sits at the forefront.
The most intriguing aspect is how they pulled it off. Amid a perimeter revolution, many recent top-tier defenses banked on the notion that neutralizing outside threats was impossible and instead focused on locking down the paint. Then Mark Daigneault’s squad proved it was feasible to build a wall on the perimeter.
The Thunder built a historic defense anchored by two elite interior defenders in Holmgren and Hartenstein. But their real power lay in deploying multiple standouts capable of guarding far from the paint. Alex Caruso, Luguentz Dort, Jalen Williams, Cason Wallace, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander raise any ball-handler’s stress levels and instill fear in every pass, immediately turning every dish into a potential steal and fast break.
It’s normal to think that defensive impact may decline. Opposing offenses will adjust to handle such a massive challenge, and the physicality they bring could prompt the league to tighten officiating. Yet there’s also a chance they set a trend and usher in a style that turns the competition toward a more contact-heavy, defense-oriented era—still under the umbrella of the three-pointer.
In either scenario, OKC will remain part of the league’s elite overall, and especially on the defensive end. The only question is how dominant they’ll be during the regular season and in the biggest games.
“Continuity” with a twist
Despite their lack of roster moves, the project’s growth is taken for granted through internal development. Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams have inked extensions, and it’s reasonable to expect a noticeable leap in their games—though this roster is set up to succeed even if they remain the same players another year.
Jalen Williams’s next step will likely come from lightening Shai’s load in creating advantages, to the point where Williams occasionally becomes the de facto point guard. The guard/forward already boasts a wide array of offensive moves and is a reliable defender in any context, even sliding in at center last year when the team was short on bigs. Williams, whose play dipped in the 2024 playoffs, proved clutch and emerged as a leader on the way to last season’s title. Once you’ve broken through, the sky’s the limit.
It’s easier to predict a big jump from Chet Holmgren, who’s still too inconsistent on offense. The young big has faced significant confidence dips with his shot and overall scoring. On paper, he’s the ultimate weapon, letting the Oklahoma City Thunder space the floor with five shooters.
But his growth must also include holding up as the lone center down low and asserting himself in the paint, because Hartenstein’s contract may be a challenge to keep long-term. More consistent shooting would greatly boost OKC’s offensive versatility. Still, Holmgren is much more than a stretch-five, and the dream is for him to eventually run the offense from the high post full-time.
On another level, players like Cason Wallace or Aaron Wiggins may take a step forward. Nikola Topic could also factor in once he returns from his injury problems.
The player to watch: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
After winning MVP, leading the league in scoring, taking the title, and earning Finals MVP, Shai’s approach this season will define what the Thunder become. As Jaylen Brown says in the new season of ‘Starting 5,’ “the game is very easy for him right now.” What sets Shai apart is how routine he makes greatness look. Night after night, he’ll show up, go to his comfort spots again and again, rack up 10 free-throw trips, and wind up dropping 30 points.
Nobody found a real counter for that last year. However, if the goal is to improve the team as a whole, he might need to step aside here and there rather than simply alternate touches with Jalen Williams. SGA isn’t Trae Young, and we’ve seen him excel when working off the ball. Becoming even better in that role could help the offense come together—an offense that was arguably the defending champs’ lone soft spot, or at least their least consistent aspect.
Beyond that, as happens with every star who enters that small circle of all-time elites where SGA has resided for two years, his legacy conversation starts now and won’t let up. Watching how the greats stay on top can be just as captivating as their rise. The challenge he faces is breaking free from the Jokic era to usher in the Shai era.
nbamaniacs’ prediction
Only the Denver Nuggets seem likely to challenge the Oklahoma City Thunder’s control of the West. Still, OKC’s roster structure leaves them better positioned to weather major injuries, so they enter the regular season with a slight edge.
We have to talk about a potential dynasty here, so this preview highlights the possible weak points and growth paths for a squad that looks like the most championship-ready team on the planet for the next five years. Their floor should be 58 wins and a conference finals berth, while you can guess their ceiling.
(Cover photo by Alonzo Adams–Imagn Images)
