Continuity Will be Key for the OKC Thunder's Upcoming Success

Following years of constant roster changes, the Thunder have settled into a new era where certainty is abundant.

After years of rebuilding and endless roster turnover, the Oklahoma City Thunder finally have stability.

Although there will still be one significant change for the upcoming season, the rotation will look primarily unchanged. Rookie Chet Holmgren will make his entrance into the starting lineup, one that showed great chemistry as the 2022-23 season went along.

The other four members of the starting group will be Luguentz Dort, Josh Giddey, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams. The trio of Dort, Giddey and Gilgeous-Alexander are entering their third season together and are the foundation of this era of OKC basketball.

Since the Thunder traded Russell Westbrook and Paul George in 2019, there has been a different iteration of the team each year. That is, of course, until now.

The first season after the trades featured Chris Paul and a young Gilgeous-Alexander leading the team to a surprising playoff appearance. OKC then traded Paul to Phoenix and left Gilgeous-Alexander with a revolving door of a supporting cast.

Veterans Al Horford and George Hill gave the Thunder some stability early in the 2020-21 season, but it was short-lived. Neither of those guys finished the season, while the Thunder also shut down Gilgeous-Alexander and Dort toward the end of the season.

In 2021, the Thunder selected Giddey as one of the four players they ended up with by the night's end. Once again, the Thunder struggled to find a rhythm and spent much of March and April 2022 playing lineups that had no business on an NBA court.

OKC landed the second pick in the 2022 draft and took Holmgren along with Williams and Ousmane Dieng later in the lottery. But after Holmgren suffered a season-ending injury in the offseason, it looked like OKC was headed for another year of the same disorganized mess.

Instead, the Thunder turned into a well-oiled machine as the season progressed.

OKC had its ups and downs before Gilgeous-Alexander’s post-All-Star absence caused a five-game losing streak. But OKC recovered by winning 12 of its final 20 games and reaching the postseason.

Williams finished second in Rookie of the Year voting, Giddey improved as a scorer and Dort began to settle into his limited offensive role. With those three leading the charge next to the first-team all-NBA selection in Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder will head into the 2023-24 season using a formula that has boded well for previous champions: continuity.

In 2023, the Denver Nuggets won their first championship after years of building around the same group. They fell short in the previous two seasons partly due to Jamal Murray’s injury.

The 2022 Golden State Warriors had a similar story. After retooling their roster when Kevin Durant left for Brooklyn in 2019, the Warriors patiently awaited Klay Thompson’s return. They won a championship when he finally made his return over two seasons in the making.

While the Thunder are younger than both of those teams, their success story could look eerily similar. They have patiently built their team mainly through drafting and developing that homegrown talent. The Thunder have also identified their missing piece and are mere weeks from seeing Holmgren fill that spot.

Although Holmgren’s return is unlikely to result in an immediate championship, the Thunder’s vision could soon be realized. Much like the Nuggets, the Thunder have refused to skip steps despite the skeptics who could not grasp the bigger picture.

The Thunder have believed in this process for many years, and big roster-shaking moves can be a thing of the past. Now that the Thunder have something to show for the seeds they’ve planted, they can simply sit back and watch it blossom.

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