Discipline and humility.
Sam Presti used those two words a combined 15 times in his two-hour preseason address Thursday from Thunder HQ.
The Thunder won the NBA title barely three months ago. Next week, with the start of training camp, OKC’s repeat bid begins. Not since the 2017 and 2018 Warriors has a team gone back-to-back.
What will it take for the Thunder to break that trend?
A lot of things, including luck, but Presti’s buzz words are a good place to start.
“The next step in front of us, in order to become a great team again,” Presti said, “is the discipline and humility to turn the page.”
Order new book on Thunder’s run to NBA title
In case you weren’t tuned in, here’s a heavy dose of Presti-isms from Thursday that more or less made the same point.
“We have to voluntarily divorce ourselves from the success of last season or it will hold us back.”
“Separating ourselves from our success last year is absolutely the most competitive thing we can do as a team”
“We have to go back to zero and have the humility to do the same mundane things again.”
So much of what Presti talked about Thursday sounded like lessons to fend off complacency, but Presti pushed back with a more positive interpretation: “I think what we’re trying to do is chase improvement,” he said.
The bottom line: Winning one championship is hard. So hard that assuming a second diminishes the accomplishment of the first.
This is the NBA, though. A league where parity has only recently existed.
From 1946-2016, a 70-year span, there were 22 years of a repeat champion. That’s a repeat winner in 30% of a large chunk of NBA history.
The 2024-25 Thunder became the seventh NBA champion in the last seven seasons — the longest such run of parity in NBA history.
That was a major talking point of commissioner Adam Silver during the NBA Finals.
During David Stern’s 30 years as NBA commissioner, eight teams won an NBA championship. In 12 years under Silver, nine teams have won a championship.
“That’s where we are with this era,” Presti said. “It doesn’t mean it will necessarily stay that way, but we’re not going to have the answers to those questions until we can look back historically.”
Presti pointed out that this age of parity predates the new CBA, which we often associate with the harshest restrictions on team-building.
“We’re still so early in the system that I’d hesitate to say that we know how it’s behaving or how teams are reacting,” Presti said.
The Thunder, which returns virtually the same roster from last year, is opening the season as almost 2-to-1 favorites to win the title.
“As we turn the page, we’re not trying to repeat an outcome,” Presti said. “We are trying to repeat a process, a process of improvement that will position us well to improve and play our best basketball at the end of the season.”
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.