Jan. 26, 2026, 5:36 p.m. ET

The reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder entered this season chasing an all-time NBA mark.

After romping their way to 68 wins last year, it was fair to think they would challenge the 2016 Golden State Warriors’ single-season NBA record of 73 wins. With the Toronto Raptors‘ stunning victory in Oklahoma City on Sunday night, the Thunder have now lost 10 games before the end of January. It stands to reason they could potentially (if not likely) lose more games this season than last. But that’s besides the point.

The Thunder’s once-reasonable pursuit of the Warriors‘ transcendent greatness over the impossible grind of an arduous 82-game campaign is officially over. Huh. Weird.

Oklahoma City was 26-3 right before Christmas. I genuinely thought it was going to take this journey all the way. As a hoops lover, what a shame to see the Thunder fall way short of what would’ve been a wild March and April as they tried to chase down those Warriors like a vintage LeBron James chase-down block.

But you know what the funny thing is?

I would bet that the Thunder, who are ironically trying to become the first back-to-back NBA champions since the 2017-2018 Warriors, count this as a blessing. How could they not? No one ever talks about how much has to go right; how much you need every bounce to go your way to even threaten winning 70-plus games.

There’s a good reason only two teams in NBA history — the 2016 Warriors and 1996 Chicago Bulls — have ever managed the feat.

Any given team’s NBA season has so many plot twists and unexpected turns. Inevitably, you have to navigate injuries to key players in your rotation, if not hope that everyone simply stays healthy in the long run. You need a schedule that doesn’t demand too much from your players, particularly these days, when it seems like every NBA offense plays at a ridiculously high pace compared to even a decade ago. This is especially true if you’re a defending champion who played over 20 more games than almost every other team in the league the season prior. You know, as a result of a championship run.

This sort of outcome just wasn’t in the cards for the Thunder.

A DIFFERENT DESTINY: Nothing about the Thunder is inevitable

By comparison, the Warriors had the basketball gods smile upon them en route to 73 wins. But their mission also cost them because they never took their foot off the gas. They pressed for the regular-season wins record by sprinting through the finish line, despite locking up the postseason No. 1 overall seed by late March. By the time they had an opportunity to close out the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals, there was nothing left in the tank. An extended campaign of never taking a single evening off tapped into their deep energy reserves. As all of us are well aware of by now, when push came to shove in the Finals, the Warriors collapsed. They allowed the only successful 3-1 comeback in the history of the Association’s grandest event.

In an alternate timeline, it’s really hard not to wonder whether those Warriors would’ve made light work of the only LeBron championship team in Cleveland. My guess is that Finals series, at minimum, probably never reaches a climactic Game 7. Unfortunately, for the Warriors’ sake, we’ll never know.

The Thunder no longer have this burden weighing on them. Quite frankly, they have bigger fish to fry.

First, they have to get healthy. Then, they have to reignite the spark and team discipline that earned them their first championship in franchise history so they can try to bring home another Larry O’Brien Trophy this spring. And even if they do find their spark again, contenders to their title belt, like the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, and Detroit Pistons, aren’t going to roll over and give them another ring. It will take every ounce of vigor and resiliency they have at their disposal to go all the way back-to-back.

THUNDERSTRUCK: Victor Wembanyama hating Oklahoma City is so good for the NBA.

An earnest chase at a regular-season record that is still special, but doesn’t immortalize you forever in basketball lore if you’re not also the last team standing, is pretty foolish to think about in hindsight.

If there’s one key lesson the Thunder have learned here while simultaneously teaching everyone else, it’s that the Warriors’ win record might never be broken. Honestly, it’s not worth the trouble.

Shootaround

This was Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.