ESPN’s NBA Summer Forecast<\/a>, don’t expect that to continue. Instead, expect the recent trend of parity to remain strong with a new champion crowned. 15 voters said they’ll be a new NBA champion next June, while 11 voters said the Thunder will repeat.<\/p>\nThat said, ESPN argued that the Thunder have the best shot in years to be a repeat winner. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just won the MVP award. Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren will continue to get better. The rest of the roster is young enough to also see leaps.<\/p>\n
“However, the voting may be too reflexive, looking into the past, rather than examining the Thunder’s case. Oklahoma City was the second-youngest team to win a title in the past 50 years, behind the 1977\u00a0Portland Trail Blazers,” ESPN wrote. “This season, it has all of its players back and makes a strong case to believe it will be even stronger in 2025-26. Those around the league have said they’d pick the Thunder to repeat as champs, and don’t see a credible argument against them.”<\/p>\n
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If any team is best set up to break the parity trend, it’s the Thunder. They spend the offseason signing Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren to long-term contract extensions. As long as those three stay healthy and improve, they’ll be in the title conversation for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: ESPN votes OKC Thunder likely won’t be repeat NBA champions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Considering where we’re at in the NBA calendar, it’s the perfect time to prepare for the 2025-26 regular…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[7943,5723,3140,3367,3359,1260,81384,6949,1268,3133,3371,62,3366,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-178567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-chet-holmgren","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-jalen-williams","12":"tag-kevin-durant","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-championship","15":"tag-oklahoma-city","16":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","17":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","18":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-stephen-curry","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115098322536420839","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}