‘Last year is over’: Oklahoma City launch title defense as NBA’s parity era faces test

Q: What challenges does Oklahoma City face in defending their NBA title?

Oklahoma City faces the challenge of maintaining focus and performance amidst the increasing talent and competition in the league, which has made title defenses increasingly difficult.

Q: How has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander performed this season?

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a frontrunner for the MVP award, showcasing remarkable efficiency and aiming to win both league MVP and NBA Finals MVP in consecutive years.

Q: When was the last time a team successfully defended their NBA title?

The last team to successfully defend their NBA title was the Golden State Warriors during the 2017-18 season.

Q: What historical significance does Oklahoma City hold in the NBA?

Oklahoma City is attempting to join an elite group of teams, including the Celtics, Lakers, and Bulls, who have held the No. 1 seed in their conference for three consecutive years and won the championship.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander could receive league MVP honors for the second year in a row.Photograph: Nate Billings/AP (Photograph: Nate Billings/AP) The NBA has not seen a reigning champion take its title defense as far as the conference finals, let alone hoist a second consecutive Larry O’Brien trophy, since the Golden State Warriors were cut off at the ankle and calf by the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 Finals. That’s seven straight seasons in which parity has ruled supreme, for better or for worse, and dynastic runs seem fated to be a thing of the past. Not if one team in America’s heartland has anything to say about it. The Oklahoma City Thunder embark on these 2026 playoffs in search of historic greatness, trends be damned. And less than two weeks before the first game of the postseason tips off, you’d be hard pressed to find substantive evidence to believe their goal won’t be achieved. Related: NBA playoff predictions 2026: the winner, key players and dark horses Oklahoma City will be the No 1 seed in the bloodbath that is the NBA’s Western Conference for the third consecutive year this season. The last time a team has accomplished this particular feat, three straight years atop their conference? That aforementioned Warriors outfit (in 2017). And it’s rarefied air in NBA history in general: the only other teams to hold down the top spot that long, respectively, are the creme de la creme: the Celtics and Lakers’ top rosters in their storied histories, and the Jordan Bulls. Every team with this accomplishment finished with the *ultimate* accomplishment: an NBA championship. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, MVP frontrunner for the second consecutive year, also exists in rarefied air at the moment. He has the potential to receive both league MVP and NBA Finals MVP honors in consecutive years. If he does, he’d be the first to do it since in 2012 and 2013. A big part of Gilgeous-Alexander’s MVP case – and why he’s heavily favored to win the award again this season – comes down to his hyperreliable efficiency, something of which even James himself has taken note. Of the Thunder star , James said: “That’s one of the things I love about Shai – for him to play on the perimeter as much as he does, in the midrange as much as he does, and *still* be as super efficient as he is? It’s Jordan-esque, for sure.” But there’s a reason, of course, that no team has successfully mounted a title defense since the 2017-18 Warriors. It’s *really* difficult to do, and increasingly so as the league has become more and more talented, and as the ability to weather the war of attrition nature of the playoffs has become paramount. The mental and physical toll of an 82-game regular-season grind certainly doesn’t get any easier to muddle through after a championship, and the only Thunder with experience in that particular arena, veteran guard , knows that all too well. I ask him what advice he had, if any, for his younger compatriots this summer, heading into a title defense. “Really just trying to stay present. Each year is a different team in the league,” he says. “I tried to tell them just stay present, enjoy the moment with the team we have now, because it’s not guaranteed that you get to try and play for a championship or play on a great team every single year.” What about the natural lag in urgency that seems almost inevitable once you’ve submitted the mountaintop? “You fight human nature a little bit through the regular season,” he tells me. “But once the postseason starts, it’s kind of do-or-die, and that mentality, that feeling, is pretty easy to chase again.” It’s worth noting that another notch in the “Oklahoma City will repeat” column is that, by all accounts, the young bucks on the team didn’t even really need much cajoling when it came to maintaining their focus throughout a long, arduous season. I ask head coach Mark Daigneault about the unique challenge that a championship defense presents, and how he’s steered his troop through it. Related: “This team, to be honest with you – it is a long season and it is a grind, but this is a team that truly enjoys being around one another,” he says. “The minute they get together on the bus, it seems that their energy goes up. When they’re together in practice or shoot-around, their energy goes up. Even in games, they gain energy by being around each other, and they’ve kind of always been like that. So, that’s been a quality that’s existed independently of context.” Daigneault also emphasizes that he encourages players not to even consider the season a “defense”, per se. “We’ve tried to look at it as a new season, that started from scratch,” he tells me in . “Last year was great, no one’s taken that away from us, but it’s also over. And we’ve tried to look at this season as a new blank canvas that we’ve had to paint on, or whatever you will. So, they’ve done a great job of that, and we’ve been able to play pretty consistent basketball throughout the season as a result.” The Thunder aren’t repeat champions *yet* – that’s why you play the games, as they say. But between their level heads, stellar leadership, youth, athleticism and skill, they are as primed as any team in recent NBA history to get the job done.

‘Last year is over’: Oklahoma City launch title defense as NBA’s parity era faces test

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