The Oklahoma City Thunder are made great by their role players. Having the MVP is a luxury that shouldn't be taken for granted, of course, and having two All-NBA caliber co-stars is just egregious spoils, but I would still venture to say that it's the infinite pool of elite role players who truly make the Thunder what they are today. And in 2024-25, the Thunder were missing their two most important role players for big chunks of the season; remember, Alex Caruso played just 54 games and Isaiah Hartenstein played just 57. And Nikola Topic, the team's lottery pick last year, played zero.
Oh, and Chet Holmgren played just 32. That seems pretty important to mention, too.
In other words, last season's Thunder weren't even at full strength for large chunks of the regular season, and "adding" a full season of a starter, two impact role players (and another potential impact rookie) seems like a pretty great way to avoid that championship hangover.
The rich get richer as the Thunder have more depth to start the season
Yes, the Thunder are "running it back" with the same roster as last season. But in reality, they're trotting out a much deeper lineup, assuming it can stay healthy. A full center rotation and a full backcourt with Caruso and Topic (who should be back early in November from his harrowing-sounding injury) plus a healthy-again Chet isn't small potatoes. Those are all real improvements over last year's roster that won... 68 games.
Can the Thunder really be better than last year? Record-wise, probably not. And net rating-wise, also probably not. That's not a lack of confidence, it's just really really hard to get better than almost the greatest team of all time. If they do improve on either of those things, then we're suddenly looking at the greatest team in NBA history, which would be... Kind of cool.
But health is still so important because it lets Mark Daigneault try to address any issues (and there weren't many) that he saw in the playoffs last year. That is a lot easier to do when he can experiment with a full-strength lineup in regular season games in December, not just high-stakes games in the spring. Not having to learn on the fly is pretty big. But as we saw last year, this team is full of quick learners.
Things are good. Really, really good.