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Mussatto: Thunder's 17th chapter is best one yet as OKC beats Pacers for first NBA title
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Sam Presti sees every season as a chapter in the Thunder's history book.
'What we have this year,' the Thunder general manager said days before the 2024-25 season, 'is the opportunity to write the 17th chapter, and we're really excited about doing that.'
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Chapter 17 — spoiler alert — ended with a championship.
The Oklahoma City Thunder claimed the 2025 NBA title, beating the Indiana Pacers in a spectacular series, capped by a 103-91 win in Game 7 Sunday night at Paycom Center.
The Thunder was going to be an outlier one way or another depending on how the NBA Finals played out.
On one hand, OKC was too good to lose. A 68-win regular season team that seemed destined to raise the Larry O'Brien Trophy. A team that routinely trounced opponents, finishing with the highest average margin of victory in NBA history. A squad defined by its swarming brand of defense.
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More: For international media, 2025 NBA Finals has been new experience in OKC, Indiana
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On the other hand, the Thunder was too young to win. Teams are supposed to fail over and over before they finally break through. The playoff scars that adorn eventual champions? The Thunder got here with nary a scratch. That's not to say it wasn't earned. Quite the opposite. It speaks to the Thunder's 'uncommon' nature, as coach Mark Daigneault likes to say.
The championship is the first in Thunder history. It came 17 years after the franchise relocated from Seattle to Oklahoma City. Thirteen years after its first NBA Finals berth. Nine years after Kevin Durant left Bricktown for The Bay. Six years after the seismic summer of 2019, when the trades of Paul George and franchise icon Russell Westbrook spawned a new era of Thunder basketball.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the prize of the George trade, has supplanted Westbrook as the greatest Thunder of them all. SGA, the league's regular-season MVP, capped his remarkable season and playoff run with an NBA Finals MVP-worthy performance.
Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren rose to the moment, forming a vaunted Big Three alongside Gilgeous-Alexander.
Daigneault, an anonymous name five years ago when he was hired, shepherded the Thunder through it all. After two 20-something-win seasons, the Thunder made the play-in. Then the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. Then, as the No. 1 seed yet again, Daigneault coached the Thunder to the title.
And Presti? Only one line was missing from his resume: NBA champion.
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No longer. Hired at 29 as the franchise's general manager, this championship was a culmination of Presti's vision. A vision that became vivid reality
The first 16 chapters of the Thunder built up to an unforgettable 17th: The Championship.
More: For international media, 2025 NBA Finals has been new experience in OKC, Indiana
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@ . Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at .
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Thunder's 17th chapter is best one yet as OKC beats Pacers for first NBA title
