Exploring the Thunder's Potential as NBA's Next Dynasty

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00:00The Thunder, the defending champs, we can look at their odds. They right now are plus 210 to win

00:06the championship. You see Cleveland right behind them in New York, so a couple of those teams in

00:10the east. But is this the NBA's next dynasty, the Thunder, knowing that they are still so young with

00:16an average age of 25 and change, only a couple players that are even older than 27? You know,

00:23it's hard to say that they aren't going to be a dynasty if there's going to be one. You know,

00:26we haven't seen one in a while, seven different champions in seven years, and that's for a reason

00:30the way the NBA is set up these days. But the Thunder are the standard that people are going

00:34to follow now. They're young, they can play quickly, and they have a bunch of assets to

00:37continue to kind of address some of the needs. And they weren't a perfect team. It took them seven

00:41games to win the finals, took them seven games to win the semifinals, but they picked 15th in this

00:46year's draft. They're trying to move in to the top 10 of this year's draft as well. They have a player,

00:50Nikola Topic, who didn't play this past year, who's joining them next year. And he is a top five

00:54level talent as far as the draft class last year. So the Thunder are set up for a lot of teams.

01:01So the same thing about the Celtics last year. So the games have to be played, teams have to stay

01:04healthy. But I feel like they're in a great position to do it again next year. SGA, the MVP,

01:11Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren are all going to get paid as well. So, you know, eventually OKC is

01:16going to run into some of these salary issues that teams like the Celtics have. If we go back to that

01:22odds board, though, to look at champions, you alluded to it. You know, we're in the era

01:26of parity in the NBA. As a matter of fact, in Adam Silver's dozen years, there have been nine

01:31champions, which is just, it's incredible. And the impact of the second apron forcing teams to sell

01:38off is only going to make that, you would think, a more and more regular occurrence. And so that being

01:44said, if it's not the Thunder, where would you put your money going into this year, at least based on

01:48what we know right now, because a lot can change between now and opening night.

01:53It's a great, great point. You know, I do think when you look at the Rockets, right,

01:56I think they're not done dealing, getting Kevin Durant, adding him to that team who he addresses

02:00a big need that they had. I think this past year, the Pacers run reminds us that you shouldn't write

02:05anybody off. And from that kind of fun angle of teams to pick, the Magic, they kind of have a

02:11similar blueprint than what the Thunder have, right? Young players, Paolo Bencaro, Franz Wagner,

02:16two guys answering a big need by bringing in Desmond Bain and then getting Jalen Suggs back

02:21into the lineup. He was injured this past year and missed this past postseason. The Magic is going

02:25to be a fun team in a wide open Eastern Conference. I think that they could make a Pacers-like run to

02:31an NBA Finals next year. A lot has to go their way, but they're capable of doing it.