How the Thunder's battle cry helped OKC become NBA champions — and one of the greatest teams of all time

Yahoo

3 hours ago

"Be where your feet are."
It is a battle cry that the Oklahoma City Thunder adopted to help them stay in the present moment. Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault first shared it with his team on Feb. 7, 2023, when they were facing the Los Angeles Lakers, whose LeBron James was set to break the NBA's scoring record over the course of the game. Daigneault did not want his players to get lost in anything but competing in the game itself.
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"The idea behind it was there's going to be so much going on in the arena during LeBron's moment that you have to be where your feet are," said Oklahoma City All-Star forward Jalen Williams between Games 3 and 4 of the 2025 NBA Finals. "You have to lock in and stay present in the moment. From there, we just ran with it. There's been so many outside factors and a lot of noise that have gone into my last three years. ... It became a little team mantra. It's just something to remind us how far we've come. The more we can get back to zero, the better we'll be."
Oh, how far they have come.
For many, that night was their first nationally televised glimpse of the young Thunder, who had spent the previous two seasons tanking. Those years yielded a foundation of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander via trade and both Williams and Chet Holmgren in the draft. Holmgren was injured back then in L.A., but Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams combined for 55 points in a narrow victory that spoiled James' celebratory night.
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We figured then it was the start of something. Nobody could have predicted that night was the birth of one of the greatest teams in NBA history, a budding dynasty, but that is precisely what happened. Two short years later, the Thunder's feet took them to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, where on Sunday they beat the Indiana Pacers 103-91 clinching the franchise's first championship since it moved to OKC in 2008.
I can almost hear you wondering, Really, this is one of the greatest teams ever? And the answer is yes, absolutely. These Thunder are one of seven teams in league history to win 68 games during the regular season and the first since the Golden State Warriors won an NBA-record 73 games in the 2015-16 season.
Only these Thunder won the title.
Oklahoma City also owns the second-best net rating (+12.8) in league history, trailing only Michael Jordan's 72-win Chicago Bulls from 1995-96. They are widely considered one of the greatest teams in NBA history, along with the 2016-17 Warriors, 1985-86 Boston Celtics, 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers and others.
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Point is: The Thunder belong among them now. How did they get here? By being where their feet are.
The Thunder are where their feet are ... as NBA champions. (Photo by)
(Getty Images)
"I think it's attacking every day, attacking every rep, attacking every possession and trying to make that a habit, and understanding the compounding nature of that and impact of that when you do that," said Daigneault, a 40-year-old in his first NBA head-coaching gig. "These are guys that have seen success taking that approach. When you do something, then you find success doing it, it reinforces it, breeds commitment. The guys have done a great job of building that muscle over a long period of time now."
"It's almost like a default," said Gilgeous-Alexander, who has turned himself into an MVP in the process.
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The Thunder's success has followed a linear progression — from a 24-win team in 2021-22 to a 40-win play-in team a year later, the same season they spoiled James' big night, to a 57-win No. 1 seed in 2023-24 and finally to the 68-win juggernaut they were this season. Their internal development cannot be denied.
"When you stack the days, stack the possessions, stack the games, that's going to take you as far as you're capable of in that moment," said Daigneault. "We're obviously further now than we were then. We maxed out what we were capable of at those times. I think that's the value of that type of approach."
It should give hope to every team out there. All it took was three seasons leaning into a growth mindset to transform from one of the NBA's worst teams, a team that was not even trying to win, to a champion.
Of course it is easier said than done. The Thunder identified Gilgeous-Alexander, who averaged 10.8 points per game as a rookie on the Los Angeles Clippers, as a future star, and not even they could have imagined he would have reached this level. They drafted Williams and Holmgren, a pair of All-Star-caliber complements, on the same night in 2022. They boast one of the smartest general managers in all of basketball, Sam Presti, who stockpiled draft picks and hit on them more often than not, building one of the deepest rosters in the league. And they targeted two of the game's best role players, Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein, this past offseason, hoping they were the final pieces to a championship puzzle.
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And it all worked. This is not always how development unfolds. You can have a motto — "be where your feet are" — but you need everyone to buy into it. You need everyone to adopt it. You need everyone to live by it, and that is not always easy, either. The players credit their coach. The coach credits his players.
Regardless, they all needed reminding of their mantra before Game 7, as none of them but Caruso had been in this spot, hours from an NBA championship. So Daigneault delivered the message once again. All the work they had done, the hours they put in, the moments they seized, it prepared them for this one.
"I think that's the deal," said Daigneault. "You want to be prepared. You certainly want to learn the lessons, get the game plan into the game, but not at the expense of aggressiveness, confidence, instincts. That has been a strength of ours this season. We certainly have to lean on that. We have to understand the work is done, and we have to trust the work. The muscle is built. We have to flex that muscle."
So, when the pressure reached its apex, when they needed most to be present, when the score was deadlocked, 56-56, midway through Game 7's third quarter, they flexed. They called on every possession they stacked, every rep they attacked. At that very moment, SGA, Holmgren and Williams connected on consecutive 3-pointers, turning a tie game into a comfortable advantage. From there, the team relied on its defense — the muscle it had worked so hard to build over time — to carry them to the championship.
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"You've got to have those themes," Daigneault said of his team's mantra. "This team responds well to those things. If you put the right thing in front of them, they really take to it. I think that's the right way to approach competition. But these guys bring it to life with the way they play. You can talk about it all you want, but it comes down to how you perform. These guys perform like competitive monsters."
When the moment called for it, they were present as themselves, calloused as champions.
"Winning is what's remembered," added Holmgren. "It's what's immortal. I'm just so happy we were able to do it. There was so much hard work that a lot of people don't see that went into this. Years of hard work for everybody that led to this. It makes it all worthwhile. It makes it all — it's just a great feeling."
Be where your feet are. On the NBA mountaintop.