2025 NBA Finals: Why the Oklahoma City Thunder are America’s Team
America’s NBA team is playing on Thursday — in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. I’m convinced the reason you don’t know them as America’s team is because they haven’t been properly marketed. I just don’t see any other plausible reason.
I’m talking about the Oklahoma City Thunder. The same Oklahoma City Thunder that were somehow not selected among the 10 marquee teams to play on Christmas Day. The same Oklahoma City Thunder that were scheduled to be on national TV fewer times this season than the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Oklahoma City Thunder should be an American sensation, yet it feels they’re preposterously underexposed. On the NBA’s biggest stage, against the Indiana Pacers in the Finals, they deserve your undivided attention. Here are five reasons why:
- They are really good at basketball. Historically good
The Thunder had a 68-14 record in the Western Conference which is like 78-4 in Eastern Conference currency. They outscored opponents by 12.7 points every 100 possessions, which was the best net rating in the league and more than 10 full points better than the Pacers’ 2.1 figure.
To get a better idea of how good this OKC team is, we have to adjust for strength of schedule (i.e. they don’t get to play in the East). We can do that by looking at Simple Rating System (SRS), which accounts for opponent strength and can be found on Basketball Reference for every team dating back to 1946. The Thunder’s SRS stands at 12.70, which means they are nearly 13 points better than the average team. The team with the best record in the East, the Cleveland Cavaliers, finished at 8.81. Even with Chet Holmgren out for the majority of its games during the regular season, OKC lapped the competition.
In 2024-25, OKC had the best SRS in NBA history. A whopping 54 of the Thunder’s 68 wins were by double-digits, which included runaway wins over Cleveland, Boston, New York, Indiana, Houston, Denver and the Lakers. To put it plainly, they beat opponents so badly (and lost so sparingly) that they rate, by many advanced metrics, as the best regular-season team in NBA history.
- The NBA needs to invest in tomorrow
There will come a day when LeBron James and Stephen Curry aren’t playing in the NBA anymore. No one knows when that day will be, but we know this: The NBA is still all-in on the LeBron and Steph business. The Warriors and the Lakers led the NBA with 29 appearances on national TV, which was 27 percent more than the Thunder, who were chasing all-time records throughout the season.
As crazy as it sounds, the Thunder were not among the 10 teams picked to play on Christmas Day this season despite being the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference last season and upgrading their depth with Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. On the other side, the Pacers weren’t showcased on Christmas Day either. This Finals matchup marks the first time since 2007 that the two conference champions were not selected by the NBA to play on Christmas Day.
Unfortunately, the NBA has to figure out what the post-LeBron and post-Steph era looks like, and investing in young great teams like the Thunder is way past due. Going forward, the Thunder should be put front and center. The NBA added several Thunder games to their national TV offering as the season went on, but their national TV count of 23 games still trailed Golden State (29), the Lakers (29), Boston (27) and New York (24) in appearances on ESPN/ABC and TNT.
It’s not like the Thunder came out of nowhere this year. The Thunder won 57 games last season with the second-youngest roster in the league! They weren’t just good; they had staying power. We’ve never seen a team this young and this good. They may not draw the largest TV ratings today, but it’d be wise to take a little hit on the audience size in the short-term and reap the long-term benefits of having American fans entrenched in Thunder vibes.
Speaking of vibes, let’s talk about the guy who was just named the league’s MVP.
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is him
I mean, look at the guy. He wears sunglasses at night. He dons giant fur coats inside. I wish I could pull off half the fits he does (or just one). The NBA loves a news