Tim MacMahonNov 12, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseJoined ESPNDallas.com in September 2009Covers the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas MavericksAppears regularly on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FMFollow on X
SGA: ‘It doesn’t feel real’ winning the NBA Finals (1:20)Shai Gilgeous-Alexander reflects on his emotions after leading the Thunder to their first NBA championship. (1:20)
FRESH OFF BECOMING the second-youngest championship team in NBA history, the Oklahoma City Thunder gathered around a table stocked with celebratory beverages and turned their attention to sage veteran Alex Caruso.
Caruso’s voice had carried a lot of weight in the Thunder’s locker room since he arrived via a trade the previous summer. At 31, he was the oldest player on Oklahoma City’s roster and the only one who owned an NBA championship ring, which he had flashed around the practice facility early in the season as a motivational tactic.
In fact, for Jalen Williams and Jaylin Williams, this would be the first time they had ever taken so much as a sip of alcohol. Their inexperience, as well as that of some of the Thunder’s other youngsters, soon became apparent.
After taking a head count, Caruso showed his teammates how to remove the foil from the bottle, undo the metal and get the cork ready — and then a few corks popped prematurely. There were a couple more false starts on the second attempt before the Thunder managed to pop the corks in sync on their third try, setting off a hilariously tame title celebration.
“It was a good first try,” Caruso said on the podium that night, removing his championship cap and rubbing his bald head while smiling wryly. “We’ll get some rest, reset, try to go again next year and see if we can do it again.
How much improvement can be expected after a franchise-record 68-win season and title run? Plenty, according to the face of the franchise and other core players, pointing out that the pair of playoff series in which the Thunder were pushed to seven games provide plenty of opportunity to nitpick.
“I don’t think as a group we played our best basketball in that playoff run,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. “And I don’t think as a player, I played my best basketball for the whole run. Granted, it’s basketball, it’s going to happen — but I had droughts, and there’s a reason why I had droughts. We had droughts as a team, and there’s a reason why we had droughts and meltdowns and things like that.
There certainly haven’t been any signs of a championship hangover, as the Thunder opened the season by winning their first eight games, the best start in the franchise’s 18-year Oklahoma City tenure. The Thunder have a league-best 11-1 record entering Wednesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers despite All-NBA wing Jalen Williams having yet to return from summer wrist surgery, among other injuries to key players.
A relentless growth mentality fueled the Thunder’s rapid ascent from a rebuilding franchise to reigning champions. They are determined not to deviate from that mindset despite what coach Mark Daigneault refers to as the “distraction” of being champions and the “challenges” that come with success.
“Whatever we want, we’ve had to make happen,” Presti said as he was wrapping up his 12-minute opening statement in his late September media availability. “In this case, making it happen means having the discipline and humility to turn the page and push ourselves forward.
“This approach fits us best because in Oklahoma, we are builders. We are not guardians. We’re not guarding or defending the past. That’s over, and it’s ours.
“The way I see — obviously it’s a different scale — but it’s easy to do one thing one time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Steph Curry’s not the greatest shooter because he made one shot. He made shots over and over and over again.
It’s an old proverb the coach often uses to illustrate the importance of committing to a methodical, daily routine in pursuit of big ambitions.
It’s the approach that Presti used while patiently constructing a contender, ignoring any temptation to bundle a bunch of the extra first-round picks in his pocket to swing for a superstar in a quick-fix trade. The franchise instead prioritized internal development, overseen since 2020 by Daigneault, whose only previous head coach experience was five seasons at the helm of Oklahoma City’s G League team.
Daigneault knows the Thunder’s core principles of professionalism and hard work aren’t unique. Every NBA franchise asks the same things of their players. But precious few have a face of the franchise who epitomizes those principles as well as Gilgeous-Alexander.
“Your players bring those things to life, and your highest gravity players have the largest influence on that,” Daigneault said. “Our team collectively has done an unbelievable job of bringing it to life, but he’s got the kind of gravity that the minute he’s not committed to one of those things, it doesn’t have the same upside.
“Fortunately for us, he’s been a guy that all along from the beginning and with the ups and downs — we lost a lot of games early on, and then he’s had a very rapid ascent since then — he’s stayed totally in character on those things and committed to those things. And it’s empowered all of those things.”
They all point to Gilgeous-Alexander’s unwavering work ethic as the most important element of the franchise’s ethos.
“He still looks like he wants to make the team. That’s just his approach,” Dort said. “That’s how he competes. He’s always been like that.
“The fact that he’s the leader of our team and still approaching it that way in Year 8 now, it just sets the tone for the rest of us. It’s like, man, we got to match that energy.”
Gilgeous-Alexander arrived in Oklahoma City as part of the Paul George trade — though the historic haul of first-round capital was the headliner in the return — and was considered an intriguing prospect coming off a second-team All-Rookie campaign. He honed his craft in relative anonymity during the rough, early years of the rebuild, when the Thunder finished second to last in the West in consecutive seasons.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s status has changed drastically in the past few years as he has been able to display his development in a competitive environment he helped create.
Gilgeous-Alexander made his first All-Star appearance in 2023, his fifth year in the league and fourth in Oklahoma City, and also was a first-team All-NBA selection then. He finished second in MVP voting the following season, when the Thunder became the youngest No. 1 seed in NBA history. He swept the MVP awards — regular season, conference finals and NBA Finals — and won the scoring title last season while releasing his first signature shoe with Converse.
“One of the special qualities that he has is his amnesia to success,” Caruso said. “He constantly wants to be a better version of himself, win more, and the competitiveness of that is contagious.”
Perhaps as importantly, Gilgeous-Alexander avoids getting caught up by grandiose possibilities in the future.
“Really and truly, all that stuff is cool, but if you don’t win [the championship], it doesn’t matter,” Gilgeous-Alexander said while walking to the bus after a comeback win over the LA Clippers Nov. 4 that improved Oklahoma City to 8-0. “That’s all we want.
“The things we want are so complicated and so hard to get. When you just focus on the simple things and the little things, you’ll look up and be there one day. But the group makes it so easy. There’s no drama around us. Nothing goes on besides us having fun and playing basketball.”
GILGEOUS-ALEXANDER PURPOSEFULLY put the Michael Jordan Trophy, awarded to the league’s MVP, out of sight and out of mind after receiving it the evening between the first two games of last season’s Western Conference finals.
He didn’t want the shine of one accomplishment he had dreamed of since childhood to dim his focus on the next lifelong goal within his grasp.
“In its case, in the basement,” Gilgeous-Alexander recalled of where he stashed the trophy for the rest of the playoffs. “All the joy and everything that comes with that would’ve been put on hold had we not won the championship, so that’d be my main goal. I had to put the fun aside for a bit, and then at the end, it was a little bit sweeter.”
Gilgeous-Alexander left the Magic Johnson Trophy, awarded to the West finals MVP, hidden in the back of his locker until the offseason.
The Thunder’s championship, however, is much harder to hide. The banner hangs over Paycom Center court, having been raised to the rafters before the season-opening double-overtime win over the Houston Rockets. That was one of 34 Thunder games scheduled to be national broadcasts, which matches the New York Knicks, Golden State Warriors and Lakers for the most in the league, proof of how bright the spotlight suddenly is in small-market OKC.
“Honestly, at the end of the day, it’s just going to come down to how bad we want to prioritize winning after we’ve won,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Everyone on the team faces that challenge. When we didn’t win, it was how bad do we want to win? And now, it’s just how bad do we want to win again?”
The biggest threat to the Thunder, the primary potential distraction, is the uncertainty of what changes might occur in 2026. The collective bargaining agreement’s dreaded second apron looms on the horizon as the Thunder’s payroll will soar next season.
Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren — the franchise’s three foundational players — aren’t going anywhere. They each signed a max or supermax contract extension in the wake of the championship worth almost $800 million combined — and more if Williams triggers the supermax escalators with another All-NBA selection.
Keeping the core intact would require the Thunder to vault over the second apron, which comes with strict roster-building restrictions and large luxury tax payments. If the franchise decides that avoiding the second apron is a priority, the Thunder could decline the 2026-27 team options in the contracts of valued role players Dort ($18.2 million) and Hartenstein ($28.5 million).