Consuming any NBA content over the summer, you can’t escape it. Since the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the rest of the league and brought home the Larry O’Brien trophy, every national pundit has uttered the sacred ‘D’ word with them.

Could the Thunder be the next NBA dynasty?

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From your average fan to Zach Lowe to even NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. The entire NBA ecosystem has wondered if the Thunder are best equipped to win multiple championships over the next five-plus years.

They took a step in the right direction this offseason. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren all nonchalantly signed contract extensions to stay in OKC through the rest of the decade. At the minimum, that should keep them in the contention conversation and earn them the benefit of the doubt through any struggles.

And at the maximum, the Thunder could be the face of the NBA in the 2020s. Ala the Golden State Warriors in the 2010s. Several deep playoff runs should be in their card. Considering how young their roster is, several players can still make dramatic leaps with internal development.

Backed up with a rich treasure trove of draft picks still, the Thunder are best set up to contend both in the short-term and long-term future. The difficult part of a rebuild is over. Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren are the type of seamless core every front office envisions. Now, it’s about maintaining the rest of the roster.

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That said, Sam Presti told folks to slow their roll on the dynasty talks. Can we see the Thunder make another deep playoff run first before they start quilting the next championship banner in Paycom Center? He poured cold water over the sizzling motion in his 2025-26 preseason press conference.

“I think you guys probably know what I’m going to say about this,” Presti said. “I think every team that’s probably won in the last six, seven years, the same things are said about them at that time. I don’t know this for a fact, but I bet we could go back and dig up some articles or some tweets or some things that are all talking about every one of these teams is on the verge of X, which is what we do as a society right now. I’m not blaming anybody, it’s just where we’re at.”

You don’t need to spend too much time online to find evidence. The same talks were said about the Boston Celtics this time last year. Same with the Denver Nuggets the year before. But you can make a sound argument that the Thunder are different, just from the room for growth they have. Those other two examples were rosters filled with players at their peak.

“But I find it a little confusing because in one sense, people are talking about that, that we’re on the verge of a dynasty, and then other people are saying we won’t be able to keep the team together because of the rules,” Presti said. “So it’s so dissident that you can’t take either one of them seriously.”

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While the Thunder will run it back with mostly the same roster that had a historic 68-14 regular-season record, they’re due for some important roster decisions as soon as this upcoming summer. Guys like Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort, Cason Wallace and Kenrich Williams will need to sign new contracts soon. It’s tough to see them all get brought back at their market value. Such is the cost of an NBA champion.

But hey, being asked about the dynasty talks allowed Presti to get some other things off his chest. He later brought up how the premature dynasty talks are similar to when folks said the Thunder wouldn’t be able to keep all of their draft picks when they spent a few years collecting them like loose change.

“It’s similar to when we had with our draft picks, we had too many draft picks, too many. We had to get rid of them, like dumping them overboard immediately, or we had to consolidate all of them and trade for a star, which of course we wouldn’t know who else we had on our team if we had done that,” Presti said. “And if people think that the team is going to struggle to stay together now, imagine if we had taken all our draft picks together and traded them for a star. That would be a real double whammy, right?”

Afterward, Presti said he doesn’t know how this era will turn out for the Thunder. Maybe they win a couple of more rings and Gilgeous-Alexander establishes himself as an all-time great guard akin to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Or maybe OKC enjoys several deep playoff runs, but finishes with one championship. Who knows? The NBA is an ever-evolving business. What the league looks like a year from now is impossible to forecast — much less five-plus years from now.

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“Then you also talk about the draft picks, and people are saying, well, but the draft picks are going to be the thing that’s going to help them avoid the Second Apron issues, right? So I don’t know what to think. I know I don’t know the answer to any of those things,” Presti said. “I definitely don’t think talking about dynasties or things like that — we have so many things we have to get better at. The West is so tough.”

All of Presti’s focus right now is on next week’s training camp. You can’t zoom out and see where the Thunder could stand in all-time status or risk losing sight of the goals in front of them. This is probably the best approach to take if you’re on the team. You can’t get too caught up in the headlines.

“We just have a good training camp. If we have a good training camp, and we have to be able to separate ourselves and show discipline, maturity, and humility to be able to put our best foot forward and respect this season, Presti said. “Because we don’t take anything with us from last year at all. We have to kinda go back to zero and have the humility to do the same mundane things again. It sounds trite, but I think it’s our best way forward.”

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Sam Presti rolls his eyes at the ‘Thunder future NBA dynasty’ talks