The Warriors won on Christmas Day. Beat the Mavericks. Survived another close game in a season that’s been full of them. It wasn’t pretty, but survival rarely is when you’re a team trying to hold onto relevance in the most violent conference in basketball.

But this isn’t about Golden State’s win.

This is about what happened in the other game. The one where the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team everyone’s been whispering about, the team that started 20-1, took a stunning loss. Yes, I’m talking about the team bold enough to openly discuss chasing the Warriors’ 73-win ghost before running into the San Antonio Spurs for the third time this season in troubling fashion. Remember how smoothly the reigning MVP and baller of epic proportions Shai Gilgeous-Alexander welcomed that all time regular season win record talk?

“Absolutely,” Gilgeous-Alexander said at Friday’s NBA Cup media availability when asked if that record meant anything to him and his teammates. “Winning matters. And no matter what form it looks like to me. So absolutely.”

So tell me why they lost to the Spurs. Again.

That’s three losses to the same opponent. Three times the Spurs have looked at this Thunder roster (all that youth, all that talent, all that defensive terror) and decided they had the answer. Victor Wembanyama and company didn’t just win. They made a statement that echoes louder than any single victory: we know how to beat you.

What history cares about is this: can you sustain excellence across 82 games when teams start solving you? Can you adjust when your blueprint gets exposed? Can you avoid the trap that swallowed the 2015-16 Warriors whole; the one where perfection became pressure?

The Thunder started the season looking like a younger, faster, hungrier version of those 73-win Warriors. Draymond Green said it himself after their earlier matchup. That defensive intensity and the ball movement lead directly into the way they suffocate opponents with length and athleticism.

But right now, the Spurs have smacked ‘em around three times this season. The Warriors learned something that season that the Thunder are learning now: dominance doesn’t guarantee invincibility. Here’s the thing people forget about that 73-win season: it wasn’t the regular season that broke the Warriors. It was the emotional and physical toll of chasing perfection while everyone else was chasing them. It was the way teams started studying film, finding cracks, exposing weaknesses. It was the weight of expectation turning every loss into a crisis and every win into proof that nothing less than history would be acceptable.

After the game, Gilgeous-Alexander said something that landed with the weight of uncomfortable truth: if a team beats you three times with the same roster in the same season, they’re probably the better team. That’s not defeatism. That’s awareness.

The Thunder don’t have to repeat that mistake. OKC is probably still the favorite for winning the title if you’re a betting person, right? They’re the best defensive team in the league by a country mile when they’re on. They have depth, they have talent, they have a superstar who’s only getting better. But what they don’t have yet is the scar tissue that teaches you how to navigate adversity when it shows up three times in a row wearing the same jersey.

Christmas Day didn’t crown anyone. But it did reveal something crucial: the path to a championship isn’t about matching the Warriors’ 73 wins. It’s about avoiding their mistakes. Because the Spurs just showed the Thunder (and the rest of the league) that even the most dominant team can be figured out. And once you’re figured out, the only question that matters is whether you’re able to change before it’s too late.

It’s hard to beat a team twice in a row, folks. Especially in back-to-back games.
Which makes what the Warriors did in San Antonio this season even more ridiculous.
Merry Christmas.