Just like that, the Oklahoma City Thunder are back. A short three-month offseason has ended. After they won an NBA championship, it’ll now be about defending their reign. But first, one of the early steps will be to complete their preseason schedule.

The Thunder will play six preseason games from Oct. 5-17. The exhibitions will serve as a warm-up timeframe for the NBA champions, as they prepare for 2025-26 Opening Night when they host the Houston Rockets and drop their championship banner.

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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren likely won’t see much action. Instead, the Thunder will rely on their training camp depth to play most of the minutes.

Here are five storylines to watch for during the preseason:

Jalen Williams’ status

Let’s keep an eye on Williams’ status. He’s still recovering from offseason surgery that fixed his torn wrist ligament. He gutted through the injury in silence throughout their playoff run that required daily pain-numbing shots. Even though he shed his brace, he’s still only putting up shots with his left hand.

The Thunder hope to have Williams for Opening Night. He enjoyed a breakout season last year as a first-time All-Star and All-NBA member.

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Nikola Topic’s debut

We saw Topic finally return to the court at Summer League. Now, the next step is how he looks with his NBA teammates. A lot of hype surrounds the 20-year-old. The novelty of a lottery pick added to the NBA champion has intrigued most folks.

Topic was the talk of the town throughout training camp. All of his teammates praised his playmaking and vision. Those are the two elements that helped him become a lottery talent despite being out his first season with a torn ACL.

3rd two-way spot

This is the only undecided roster spot. The Thunder entered training camp with two two-way players in Branden Carlson and Brooks Barnhizer. Both will have 50-game limits under their current deals and should spend plenty of time on the G League’s OKC Blue.

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One of four players might join them. The Exhibit 10 players are Malevy Leons, Chris Youngblood, Zack Austin and Jazian Gortman. That group should get plenty of playing time in the preseason. At the very least, they have their G League rights.

Playing at non-NBA arenas

The Thunder will play at a couple of non-traditional markets to start their preseason schedule. The first will be against the Hornets in South Carolina. They will play at the North Charleston Coliseum. The second will be against the Mavericks in Fort Worth, TX. They will play at Dickies Arena.

Interestingly enough, they will play both in a back-to-back to start their preseason on Oct. 5-6. The rest will be played at normal NBA venues, which means no BOK Center game this year in Tulsa. That happened due to a scheduling conflict.

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Do SGA, Holmgren play

Let’s see how many games Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren suit up for. At this point, we know who they are. Gilgeous-Alexander is the reigning MVP, while Holmgren could be due for the breakout season he was robbed of last year with a hip fracture.

History suggests they should play at least some of the preseason. But don’t expect anything more than a half. You don’t want to end up with another situation akin to what happened to Isaiah Hartenstein last year, when he sustained a hand fracture in preseason that cost him the first month of the regular season.

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Here are 5 2025-26 preseason storylines OKC Thunder should watch