The Thunder are in the midst of an impressive start to the season. Now sitting in the NBA Cup semi finals for the second straight season, the NBA world descended to Vegas for Friday’s Media Day. Players on each roster were peppered with wide ranging questions during the event.

Oklahoma City is the hunted this season, that was the narrative entering the 2025-26 campaign after the Thunder rattled off a league-best 68 wins and a championship a year ago.

Well, 25 games into the season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was asked about the differences between the last regular season and this one post-Championship.

“I don’t really know. It doesn’t feel a certain way. We go out there with, I think, a hunter’s mentality ourselves. And honestly, we go out there to just better ourself,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I’m sure you guys have heard the stories about some of my teammates competing against each other during the games to get steals and things like that. That’s where our mind is. We are trying to be a better version of ourselves every night we go out there, and we like to hunt in that form. If we didn’t get better tonight, then we wasted an opportunity. That’s kind of how we see it.”

That hunter’s mentality has led to the Oklahoma City Thunder sitting at 24-1, tying the Golden State Warriors for the best start in NBA history through 25 games. That season, the Warriors rattled off 73 wins. Many believe that is a mark the Thunder can reach and surpass during the 2025-26 campaign. However, does that cross the mind of the NBA’s reigning MVP as something meaningful to accomplish?

“Absolutely. Winning matters. And no matter what form it looks like to me. So absolutely,” Gilgeous-Alexander said definitively at Friday’s NBA Cup media day.

While only a quarter of the season under their belt, the Oklahoma City Thunder have a long ways to go in their pursuit of history. However, this answer gave a glimpse into the team’s mindset. Given the team isn’t just winning, but lapping the field with the rest of the sport, it is becoming more real by the day that the Thunder could achieve this goal.

The next chance for the OKC Thunder to continue their dominance of the NBA, improve their record and build on their current franchise-best 16 game winning streak comes on Saturday night against the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Cup semi-final.

Stay tuned to Thunder on SI for complete coverage of this historic season for the Oklahoma City Thunder.