No NBA team has won back-to-back championships since the Warriors did it in 2017 and 2018. In fact, no club since 2019 has even appeared in two consecutive NBA Finals. For most of the 2025/26 season though, it looked like the Thunder were in a great position to accomplish both feats.
After missing Chet Holmgren, a member of their “big three,” for over half the season in 2024/25, the Thunder found themselves in a similar boat in ’25/26. While Holmgren was healthy again after making just 32 regular season appearances a year earlier, All-NBA forward Jalen Williams was limited to 33 regular season outings in ’25/26. Williams got a late start in the fall after recovering from elbow surgery, then dealt with recurring hamstring issues during the second half.
However, the Thunder have such a deep roster that – for a second straight season – they barely missed a beat despite being without a top starter for a significant chunk of the year. They followed up a 68-14 season in ’24/25 with 64 more wins this past season, once again securing the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and recording the NBA’s best overall record.
After blowing through the first two rounds of the playoffs with eight consecutive victories over the Suns and Lakers, the Thunder squared off in the Western Conference finals against an unexpected powerhouse in the Spurs, who went from 34 wins in ’24/25 to 62 in ’25/26. With Williams set to return from his latest hamstring strain, San Antonio’s starting point guard De’Aaron Fox out for the start of the third round due to an ankle injury, and the defending champion Thunder holding a significant playoff experience edge over the young Spurs, Oklahoma City entered the Western finals as favorites and held leads of 2-1 and 3-2 over the course of the series.
However, the Spurs – who won four out of five games against the Thunder during the regular season – were always a tricky matchup for OKC. And it certainly didn’t help matters that Williams re-injured his hamstring in Game 2 and his replacement in the starting lineup, Ajay Mitchell, suffered a calf strain that sidelined him for the last four games of the series.
Oklahoma City’s “next man up” approach to injuries over the past two years had been effective because the team’s “next man up” was, almost without fail, another high-level contributor. But with Williams and Mitchell, two of the Thunder’s top ball-handlers and play-makers, out against San Antonio, the club’s offense sputtered — two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggled to shoulder so much of the shot-creation burden against one of the league’s best defensive teams, led by Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyama. The Thunder were blown out in Game 6 and then lost at home in Game 7, extinguishing their hopes of becoming the NBA’s first repeat champions in nearly a decade.
Could the Spurs series have turned out differently if Williams and Mitchell were available and 100% healthy? Possibly. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Thunder should be content to run back the same roster and hope for better results — or even that they can take that route.
Williams, who was plagued by injuries all season, and Holmgren, whose inability to impact the game against Wembanyama and the Spurs was a cause for concern, both have maximum-salary rookie scale extensions taking effect this July, pushing team salary into tax (and apron) territory for the first time since 2020. That could force the front office to make some difficult decisions on veterans who have played critical rotation roles in recent years for a Thunder team that has turned into a perennial contender.
The Thunder’s Offseason Plans
Before we dig into the offseason decisions facing the Thunder in greater detail, it’s worth stressing that there’s technically nothing stopping the organization from bringing back every single one of the players that finished the 2025/26 season on the 15-man roster. Each of them has either a guaranteed salary, a partially guaranteed salary, or a team option for ’26/27, so those decisions are entirely in the Thunder’s hands.
But taking that route would require the Thunder to pay a massive luxury tax bill and would push the team’s salary far beyond the second apron, restricting its ability to make additional moves during the coming league year. If a club is happy with its current roster and believes it’s capable of winning a championship, those second apron restrictions aren’t a major deterrent. But if Oklahoma City were to exercise everyone’s options and bring all 15 players back, its team salary would be nearly $250MM, which would work out to a tax bill of roughly $210MM.
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