As the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder prepare to open the season, News 9’s Steve McGehee sat down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with Aaron Wiggins. The guard discussed the emotions of championship ring night, facing Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets, and how the Thunder plan to keep a hungry mindset heading into the new year.

How do you envision Tuesday night, with the ring ceremony and the championship banner?

Aaron Wiggins: “I think there will be a lot of emotions kind of behind it. Obviously, it’ll be an electric night opening the new season, but with the ring ceremony and just kind of what that means for the city and for the organization, it’ll be a bit of an emotional kind of moment. But at the same time, we’ll have to get ready to go, you know, play that game right after. So quick moment, but it’ll be fun.”

Opening night also means facing Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets. What are your thoughts on that matchup?

Aaron Wiggins: “Yeah, I mean obviously there’s been a couple changes, you know, throughout the NBA, especially in the West, and the Rockets specifically are a team that, you know, made some changes. And with the addition of Kevin Durant, it’ll be a different look for them. And then, you know, with the history of him being in our organization and having been here before, it’ll be a moment that the crowd definitely kind of views as a special opportunity also. So it’ll be fun to match up first game of the season, right into the fire.”

How do you avoid getting too comfortable after winning it all last season?

Aaron Wiggins: “I think one thing that I could say that we’ve kind of preached is that it’s a journey that starts at the beginning of each season. Obviously, coming off of last season, you accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, but with this new season, you can’t carry that into this upcoming season.

“So we’ve got to embrace the new journey and understand that it’s going to take us getting better every single day from this point forward. And nothing’s given. You have to go out there and you have to earn the right to compete for a championship and to play in the playoffs. So our guys understand what it takes, and we’re all kind of grounded in making sure we’re getting better from day one.”

Alex Caruso said the team still has to be the hunter, not the hunted. How do you approach that?

Aaron Wiggins: “I think for our team, it’s not the biggest difficulty considering that we’ve been hunting for years up to this point. Even though we were able to kind of get the job done last year, that mentality has kind of been engraved in us, and we understand that we have to be the hunter.

“You’ve got to have the aggressive and the hit-first mentality and make other teams respond to you. So it’s kind of been engraved in us, and we’ll have to continue to go out and, you know, have that hunter’s mentality.”

What did you focus on during the offseason to prepare for this year?

Aaron Wiggins: “I mean, there were a lot of focuses in the offseason, primarily focusing on the body, making sure that I was healthy and ready to go this season. But there are a lot of things, both defensively and offensively, that I’ve tried to improve on and focus on. And I’ll continue to just kind of grow with that and hopefully show more and more on the court every year.”