The OKC Thunder have been the rulers of the NBA regular season over the past three years.
Since 2023-24, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and company have wrapped up each year with the best record in the entire association, with their championship-winning 2024-25 campaign even seeing them register the fourth-most wins ever in a single regular season with 68.
Despite this consistency, however, the folks at ESPN are predicting that Oklahoma City's streak of being at the top will end this coming year, as their NBA insiders have budding rival and reigning NBA Finals runner-ups, the San Antonio Spurs, projected to finish with the best record in both the West and the entire league at 62-20.
To Michael C. Wright, the long-time ESPN reporter who penned this section of the piece, the bevy of losses the Thunder endured this summer, coupled with San Antonio's "upgraded" roster with the addition of Tobias Harris, are the factors that went into this particular hypothetical hierarchy.
Of course, even with their demotion in the pecking order, the Thunder are still predicted to finish with the second-best record at 60-22, which, if achieved, would make them just the seventh team in history to register 60 or more wins in three straight seasons, with the last to do so being the Golden State Warriors (2014-2017).
Thunder still widely regarded as favorites to win NBA Championship
Though they may not be viewed as the expected top dogs of the Western Conference regular season standings, many of the odds-makers out there still have the Thunder pegged as the favorites to finish the postseason as the last team standing.
The folks at FanDuel are giving OKC the top odds to pull away with the Larry O'Brien Trophy this coming season at plus-230, while Kalshi is currently giving them a league-best 23 percent chance to do so.
ESPN is actually one of the few publications to not have the Thunder as their sole top option to win it all in 2027, yet they have them tied with the Spurs atop the odds department at plus-270.
Clearly, there's good reason for such optimism.
Even with their offseason losses, Oklahoma City finds itself returning to action with the vast majority of its championship-winning core still intact.
Most importantly, the expectation is that their star-studded Big Three of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, and Jalen Williams are finally slated to come into the year fully healthy, something that never proved to be the case for J-Dub all of last season.
Add this to the rest of this rotation that consists of the skyrocketing stocks of guys like Cason Wallace and Ajay Mitchell, the always trusty veteran role players in Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein, and a couple of recently selected first-round prospects such as Aday Mara, Bennett Stirtz, and Thomas Sorber, and it seems painfully obvious why the Thunder are still widely regarded as the biggest threat to win the 2027 title.
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