After putting forth a truly historic 2024-25 season that saw them set the record for highest per-game point differential (12.9), record the fourth-most wins (68), and, ultimately, take home their first NBA Championship, the OKC Thunder have come out of the gates in this follow-up campaign guns a-blazin.
After just four games of play, some are even under the belief that 2025-26 could wind up proving to be monumentally better, at least as far as their regular-season record is concerned.
In a recent piece, The Athletic's Zach Harper gushed over Oklahoma City, specifically stating that they're absolutely "thriving" during these early stages of the campaign.
After going into further detail, the national NBA writer would take things a step further, as he would state that the ball club should already have fans, pundits, and the rest of the league as a whole "on 74-win watch."
National NBA writer already has OKC Thunder on '74-win watch'
Coming into the year, the idea that this Thunder team could win more games than last season wasn't believed to be all that far-fetched.
As ESPN's Tim MacMahon put it earlier this summer, "it ain't like they went all-in to get to 68 last year," as they endured a bevy of injuries, which, as a result, saw them roll out a whopping 30 different starting lineups along the way.
Unfortunately, these health woes appear to have followed them into this year as well, as they are trudging through the first few weeks of action with several regular contributors sidelined, most notably All-NBA forward Jalen Williams, who's still recovering from offseason wrist surgery.
Yet, despite these hardships, Oklahoma City has still proven to be an absolute menace for all opponents that they have faced.
Whether it's been a back-and-forth affair that's bled into extra innings (they've seen two double-overtime affairs so far this year), or a somewhat smooth domination fest like their 117-100 win over the Atlanta Hawks just last week, the Thunder have shown no signs of a championship hangover.
In fact, at an undefeated 4-0 (all of which came against presumed playoff threats), while accompanied by the league's best defensive punch (104.4 defensive rating) and a top-five net rating (9.2), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and company are only building up a stronger case for why they could very well become the first repeat champion since the 2018 Golden State Warriors.
Harper, however, isn't focused on June just yet. Instead, he's eyeing mid-April, where he believes the Thunder could very realistically become the third team in history to win 70 or more wins.