{"id":137725,"date":"2025-06-30T23:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T23:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/137725\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T23:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T23:10:14","slug":"thunders-sam-presti-sends-message-to-fans-after-championship-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/137725\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder&#8217;s Sam Presti Sends Message to Fans After Championship Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/athlonsports.com\/nba\/oklahoma-city-thunder\/thunders-sam-presti-sends-message-to-fans-after-championship-season\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Thunder&#039;s Sam Presti Sends Message to Fans After Championship Season;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Thunder&#8217;s Sam Presti Sends Message to Fans After Championship Season<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/athlonsports.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Athlon Sports;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Oklahoma City Thunder just completed a postseason that will long be remembered in the city and for fans of the team. They finished with the league&#8217;s best record at 68-14, giving them home-court advantage throughout the NBA Playoffs and NBA Finals.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Some didn&#8217;t think that would play a factor after the Thunder made quick work of the Minnesota Timberwolves, taking the series 4-1. However, the Indiana Pacers proved more challenging than anticipated and pushed the Thunder to a seven-game series.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton drives to the basket against Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander during Game 6 of the 2025 NBA Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on June 19, 2025.Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/cd3ef02910be2841dd68d4dacc99cd6c.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton drives to the basket against Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander during Game 6 of the 2025 NBA Finals at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on June 19, 2025.Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>Thunder&#8217;s Sam Presti sends message to fans after Championship season<\/p>\n<p>In the winner-take-all Game 7, Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton ruptured his Achilles tendon and was forced to miss the rest of the game. The Pacers gave the Thunder a run for their money, but the Thunder were ultimately too much for the short-handed Pacers.<\/p>\n<p>Following the Thunder&#8217;s win, General Manager Sam Presti thanked the fans for their support throughout the season.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Want to thank our fans clearly,&#8221; Presti said. &#8220;They&#8217;ve been fantastic for us over the last 2 months&#8230; The support at the parade, you can&#8217;t really put that into words.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This marked the Thunder&#8217;s first-ever NBA Championship in just their second appearance in the finals. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was named the NBA Finals&#8217; Most Valuable Player after taking home the MVP award in the regular season while leading the league in scoring.<\/p>\n<p>The Thunder will now have the tough task of defending their title. We saw the Boston Celtics fall short of doing so, and the league hasn&#8217;t seen back-to-back titles since the Golden State Warriors won in 2017 and repeated in 2018. If any team is geared to protect their title, it&#8217;s the Thunder, as nearly none of Oklahoma City&#8217;s key players are set to become free agents.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re someone who believes the key to winning is longevity, all the more reason to believe that the Thunder can repeat next season. They&#8217;re currently the betting favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook at +225.<\/p>\n<p>This story was originally reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/athlonsports.com\/nba\/oklahoma-city-thunder\/thunders-sam-presti-sends-message-to-fans-after-championship-season\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Athlon Sports;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 30, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thunder&#8217;s Sam Presti Sends Message to Fans After Championship Season originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Oklahoma City&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,75,164,126,152,6,1220,11,475,179,3136,209,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-137725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-indiana-pacers","12":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-finals","15":"tag-nba-playoffs","16":"tag-oklahoma-city","17":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","18":"tag-sam-presti","19":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","20":"tag-tyrese-haliburton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114774843324607548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}