How The Thunder Can Take Another Leap Next Season With Same Core Rotation

Forbes

5 days ago

Entering the 2025-26 campaign as reigning champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder will be the team to beat in the upcoming season. Teams all around the league, especially in the Western Conference, have made roster adjustments and are moving forward with more complete, competitive squads.
Teams like the Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets have made what appear to be significant leaps in their ability to challenge the Thunder this season with their offseason moves. Conversely, Oklahoma City is effectively running back the same roster. The Thunder will be adding rookies to the active roster who didn't play for the team last season, but otherwise, the roster is essentially the same, especially in terms of rotational pieces.
That naturally raises a question of whether OKC will have what it takes to hold its ground as champions against some of these other teams that have improved their rosters through trades and free agency acquisitions. The short answer is that the Thunder should still be clear favorites to win the title in the upcoming season, but it's important to evaluate why that should be the case.
To start, chemistry plays a significant role in the NBA. That's especially true in the playoffs, as individual experience and minutes on the floor with familiar pieces are natural catalysts for team success. Oftentimes, contending teams can make legitimate leaps year-over-year by keeping core pieces intact and seeing better collective results. The Thunder was still extremely inexperienced during its championship run last season. This time around, the vast majority, if not all, of the players who will be suiting up for the next playoff run gained significant experience on the road to the title.
From there, internal development and players getting better are always organic factors in teams improving each season. For Oklahoma City specifically, the team's youth would suggest that more significant individual jumps in performance are attainable. As players progress later in their NBA careers, the general trend is that it becomes more challenging to see drastic jumps in production and on-court performance, especially for players who already have refined games. But with all of the young players in Oklahoma City, running back the same roster could look much different next season in a good way, given nearly every player has much room to improve.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander consistently finds ways to improve each off-season. Still, given the incredible nature of his past two seasons, the expectation is that his improvement will be more marginal around the edges. But for his co-stars, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, there's still plenty of room for improvement, even with how good they already are. Williams should come out next season playing with extreme confidence, having just completed a spectacular NBA Finals run and the accolades that came with it. Holmgren missed significant time last season due to injury and simply being healthy will move the needle in terms of his ability to contribute, especially offensively. He appeared somewhat limited upon his return from injury last season, but was still effective. Getting back to his pre-injury shape and mobility could enable him to make an NBA All-Star leap this season.
It's also important to remember that Holmgren wasn't the only center to miss significant time last season. Isaiah Hartenstein was also sidelined in the early part of the season with an injury, and the overlap between him and Holmgren was minimal. Oklahoma City had tremendous success last season running the double-big lineups, but the Thunder didn't get nearly as many minutes in the regular season between these two as they would have liked. A good portion of the games in which Holmgren was healthy during the regular season, Hartenstein missed. The opposite is true for the games that Hartenstein played, as Holmgren was sidelined during the entire middle part of the season.
With those two being healthy and playing alongside each other, regardless of whether either of them takes another step forward this season, it should lead to even more regular season success for the Thunder.
While incoming rookies Nikola Topic and Thomas Sorber may not crack the playoff rotation in the upcoming season, they will undoubtedly get plenty of reps during the regular season. Just having that depth with two more quality young prospects should be very helpful for the Thunder.
Overall, Oklahoma City should be able to run the same core rotational players back next season, while other teams around the league improve through roster acquisitions, and still have a strong chance of winning another title. The Thunder will still be the team to beat in the upcoming season, thanks to internal development, enhanced chemistry and the addition of rookies. This team could still improve on its 68-win total from last season despite looking nearly the same.