You can bet all of the small-market and rebuild teams cheered on the Oklahoma City Thunder to bring home the Larry O’Brien trophy these past NBA Finals. When you win a championship, expect there to be copycats. It’s part of professional sports. As they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

The Thunder showed that teams can still build an NBA champion through the draft and trades. Those two routes are usually taken by most franchises outside of the Los Angeles Lakers. It might not be as splashy as trading for Luka Doncic out of nowhere, but homegrown talent is the most sustainable way to go for most of the league.

Advertisement

While Shai Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t technically a homegrown talent, his superstar ascension happened in OKC. Meanwhile, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams were the prizes of their recent drafts. Looking at the rest of the roster, it’s filled with guys who’ve outplayed their draft selection. That reflects on their developmental roots.

One NBA franchise that hopes to copy the Thunder’s blueprint is the Brooklyn Nets. Longtime general manager Sean Marks said they’ll try the draft-and-develop approach after the superstar-acquisition philosophy backfired on him with Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving.

“I give OKC and Sam Presti and his group a lot of credit for how they built that and the patience they’ve shown. Hitting on the right guys, whether it’s trade or draft. I think that’s something we’ve obviously studied,” Marks said. “We’ll sit there and say, ‘What can we take from them and a variety of other teams?’ Try to implement that here. How can we take advantage of the new CBA and so forth? But also capitalizing on our market. Being in New York and Brooklyn is obviously a different market than Oklahoma City.”

So far, the Nets have stuck to their word. They had an eye-popping five-player draft class. Rarely do you see an NBA team add five rookies to its roster in a single summer. Egor Demin was the main piece as the No. 8 pick of the 2025 NBA draft.

Advertisement

If you’re drawing parallels, the Nets are in their early 2020s stage to the Thunder. It’s all about stacking young talent and seeing if anybody shines. Right now, they have no franchise cornerstones. But that can obviously change this upcoming season with several young players given the opportunity to learn on the job.

The Thunder have shown teams across the league they can dominate without being a superstar attraction. They just need a patient ownership group that’s willing to give the front office and coaching staff time to add talent. Easier said than done, but there’s a pathway any franchise can duplicate regardless of market size.

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: One NBA GM hopes to copy OKC Thunder for their rebuild plans