The Oklahoma City Thunder are Going to Singlehandedly Obliterate NBA Parity
February 4th, 2026
Say goodbye to the era of NBA parity. The Oklahoma City Thunder are about to kill it.
Seven different teams have won each of the past seven NBA titles. One cursory look through odds at the best NBA betting sites tells you the Association will not be getting an eighth straight non-repeat.
After hanging a banner for the 2024-25 campaign, Oklahoma City isn’t just heavily favored to win it all at the end of the 2025-26 campaign. It is comically, cosmically favored to be the first repeat champion since the Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors.
Yet, even as we say that, the Thunder may not be heavily favored enough. Most sportsbooks are still letting them pay out better than even money. That is absurd. It implies that the field has a chance. In reality, the field has no chance. Not this year.
And maybe not for the next few, either.
Oklahoma City is Built to Last
Juggernauts are not for everyone. Some fans appreciate variety in their championship-winners, a la the NFL with its Super Bowl champions. Then, of course, there are the fans who don’t want to watch an entire 82-game regular season if their team doesn’t have a puncher’s chance of dethroning the top squad.
Oklahoma City has the look and feel of an organization that is going to turn off those types of fair-weather fans. It has what would be a record-setting point differential, along with a realistic chance of breaking the NBA’s single-season 73-win mark, which was set by the 2015-16 Warriors.
But this is about more than just the 2025-26 season. It is about the future. The Thunder are built to dominate that, too.
In the Era of Aprons, no team’s reign is supposed to last very long. Roster-building restrictions are harder-line than ever as you get more expensive. And this says nothing of the luxury-tax penalties involved once your team crosses a certain threshold.
Even the most deep-pocketed organizations can’t stomach much time inside the dreaded second apron. The Los Angeles Clippers ran from it. Ditto for the Phoenix Suns. And the Boston Celtics.
The Thunder are different. They have the tools and resources to break the cycle of second-apron fears.
To be quite honest, if you have an ownership group willing to foot a luxury-tax bill, life in the second apron is a matter of stomaching roster-building restrictions. You can’t aggregate salaries in trades. Or take back more money than you send out. You can’t use the mini mid-level exception. If you spend enough time in the second apron, your draft picks seven years into the future get frozen out of trades and moved to the end of the first round.
This is incredibly problematic for teams that are not especially deep, young or stocked with other means of pipelining in cost-controlled prospects with higher upside. Oklahoma City doesn’t have this issue.
Not only do the Thunder have one of the seven youngest teams in the NBA, but they have the Association’s deepest rotation, bar none. More importantly, they have extra-draft picks galore. They will have no fewer than two first-round picks in every draft through at least 2029. So even if players price themselves out of town, they will have the means to develop younger players to replace them—the caliber of youngsters to whom no other contenders have access.
We Could Be Witnessing the Early Stages of an NBA Dynasty
We do not say this lightly: The Thunder could be the NBA’s next dynasty. We aren’t talking about a truncated window of dominance, like the Warriors enjoyed. We are talking about sustained excellence, similar to the San Antonio Spurs between 1998 and 2019, only potentially longer, and with more championships won.
Sure, this might sound inflammatory. But the Thunder’s brand of dominance and cache of assets speak for themselves.
Short of the mothership calling Shail Gilgeous-Alexander home, Oklahoma City is built to navigate every short- and long-term obstacle thrown in its way for the foreseeable future. This squad shouldn’t have to even think about knifing into its championship core for at least three years. And once they do, they have the pieces to fill in, augment and even upgrade the rest of the roster.
Put another way: Arrivederci, NBA parity. We’ll catch you again, at some point, a long time from now, if and when the Thunder allow it.
