Despite having been the reigning number one seed in the West, being led by a budding superstar, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and sporting one of the deepest rosters in the entire league, heading into the 2024-25 season, the OKC Thunder were surprisingly being counted out as both a marketable franchise and serious title contender.
Now, after a truly historic campaign that saw them thrust over the hump and win their first NBA Finals, with SGA simultaneously shedding his "budding" label and earning unquestioned superstardom status along the way, one would expect the doubters to finally take a rest.
Sadly, this doesn't appear to be the case as we approach the 2025-26 season.
Thunder already being counted out as 2026 NBA Champions
In a recent piece by ESPN, the publication shared results from their "Summer Forecast panel" that answered some of the NBA's biggest questions heading into the upcoming season.
From what team they believe will take "a major leap" to which superstar will be the first to request a trade, the panel of NBA insiders touched on a ton of topics.
When it came to the burning question of whether the Thunder would be the ones to snap the NBA's ongoing stretch of parity and find themselves repeating as league champs, sadly, the consensus vote was no, with 15 out of 26 poll participants saying that they believe another team will be crowned as kings.
"The Thunder were on the ropes in the second round against the Denver Nuggets and in the Finals against the Indiana Pacers. The inevitable growing competitiveness of the league, plus some questions about OKC's staying power, led our panel to conclude parity will reign over the NBA this season," wrote Tim Bontemps.
A big reason for why people are leaning toward seeing a new club claim the NBA title this coming year is on account of the fact that there has not been a repeat championship since the Golden State Warriors did so back in 2018, nor has there even been a defending champion who has made it past the conference semifinals since 2019 (also the Warriors).
However, at some point, this streak of revolving winners will have to come to an end, and, by the looks of it, the Thunder are in the best position to snap it.
There's a realistic case to be made that Oklahoma City could be even better than they were last year, especially considering core players like Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams are slated to come into the season at full strength, which, sadly, was not the case throughout 2024-25.
They are also seeing players who accounted for 99.2 percent of their playoff minutes return for their follow-up run.
Add all of this to the fact that essentially this same roster just put forth one of the most dominant campaigns in the association's history, as they shattered the record for per-game point differential with +12.9, and, regardless of what this panel says, it should come as little surprise that they are the odds-on favorites to win the 2026 NBA Finals.