Before the Oklahoma City Thunder begin their NBA championship defense, they still have one more night left to celebrate the Larry O’Brien trophy. As in tradition, they will kick off the 2025-26 regular season by hosting the first matchup.

They will host the Houston Rockets and Kevin Durant. But before the ball tips off, the Thunder will drop their championship banner and hand out rings in a pregame ceremony to begin the NBA on NBC era. Expect emotions to be high when that happens.

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While Sam Presti’s theme for his 2025-26 preseason press conference was turning the page, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Thunder have to downplay their first NBA championship to mentally prepare for the upcoming marathon.

“I want to be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be proud of what we accomplished or we can’t look backwards. It’s strictly if we want to capitalize on the season, we have to turn the page competitively,” Presti said. “Not emotionally for our fans; they’ll have that forever. But we need to do that to get better.”

You always hear about complacency creeping into the minds of players who’ve won an NBA championship. After all, it’s only human nature to take it easy after you accomplish a life goal. But this is professional sports. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if the Thunder don’t want to become another reigning champion who doesn’t want to fall short of their repeat aspirations, they have to fight that intangible as much as they battle the opposing team on the court.

I’m sure it will be a great evening. We’ve seen these before. There’s one of these every year. Extremely fortunate for us to be able to take part in that. I think everyone will be really excited,” Presti said. “At the same time, if you’re going to ask the people in this building, we have a hell of a team that we have to play against on that night.”

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Besides the obvious storyline of Durant in OKC for their championship celebration, Presti said he’s excited to get right into it for the first game of the regular season. The Rockets are viewed as one of the stronger threats that could dethrone the Thunder.

“So all systems are going to be focused on continuing to go out and perform and execute to see where we are when we’re playing against a great Western Conference team,” Presti said. “And that will be kind of the launch point to see kind of how we can improve from there.”

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: How excited is Sam Presti for 2025-26 Opening Night pregame ceremony?