⛈️ This OKC Thunder Era is the BEST in NBA History and Just Starting

How we doin, Chirp Fam! The NBA season is now almost 20% over with already. I know right? You’ve probably barely watched any hoops yet because of how fire football season has been all year. Let’s discuss the elephant in the room in the NBA.

The defending champs OKC Thunder are back and even better than last year. In fact, they’re on a historic pace that puts them in the upper echelon of all time teams. Let’s walk through how they got here and what the future looks like for them. If you’re reading on the web, be sure to subscribe to never miss a Chirp Report here. Let’s get straight to it.

It’s the summer of 2019. The Toronto Raptors just beat the Golden State Warriors in the finals thanks to a legendary Kawhi Leonard run for the ages. Every team in the league is fucking scrambling to line up the jets to acquire The Claw in free agency.

The Los Angeles Clippers, the permanent little brother in LA to the Lakers is just coming off of a 1st round exit to that dominant Warriors team. The Lakers had missed the playoffs for 6 straight years at this point, but rumors were swirling around the league that they were going to make a huge push for Kawhi.

The Clippers had exited the CP3 and Blake Griffin lob city era empty handed, not even close to sniffing a finals appearance or championship banner. Owner Steve Ballmer had turned the franchise around from bottom dwellers of the league when he took over in 2014, but there was more to the mission than just playoff appearances.

In the late hours of July 5th, Ballmer and the Clippers made their 2nd move. 30 minutes before midnight on the 6th, Woj announced Kawhi had signed a 4 year deal with the Clippers. Just a couple of hours later, the biggest trade in NBA history hit the news waves.

The now infamous trade which sent Paul George to the Clippers for a fucking ridiculous amount of picks and now MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was probably actually the 1st move. If not for this trade being in place, Leonard probably would have went elsewhere.

The pairing of the 2 star wing players at the time looked like a match made in heaven. Both were in the primes of their careers, Kawhi coming off of a monumental playoff run for Toronto in which he averaged 28, 35, 30, and 28 PPG across the 4 rounds cutting down the nets for the Raptors in the end against the scariest team ever assembled.

PG was just coming off of a career high 28-8-4 season for the Thunder. Both hoopers were just 28 years old. This looked like a pairing that could make finals runs for the next 5+ years.

Flash forward 6 completed seasons and what do they have to show for it? 1 conference finals appearance, 3 straight first round exits, 1 play-in game exit, and 1 second round exit. Both players missed 37% of their games while playing for LAC during their ~5 year stretches, including Leonard missing the entire 2021-2022 season.

Kawhi also missed the remainder of the Clippers closest chance at a title in the 2021 playoffs tearing his ACL in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semis against the Jazz. George did all he could in the WCF against the Suns, but they were severely outmatched with their lack of depth against D-Book and CP3.

CP3 put up a huge fuck you to his old squad in the clinching game that sent the Clippers back home exploding for 41 points. Hindsight is 20/20, but based on what the Clippers were able to accomplish during this era, this trade is horrendous.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a consensus top 5 player in the NBA now and still just 27 years old. Already an MVP and Finals MVP winner, he’s the fucking guy.

Drafted Jalen Williams with the Clippers pick in 2022. J-Dub is the number 2 scoring option on this OKC squad who put up 21.6 PPG last year as well as 5 boards and 5 dimes per game.

Rookie center Thomas Sorber who they took at 15 this year will miss the entire season with a torn ACL suffered in the offseason. They still have the Clippers unprotected 2026 1st to play with next year too.

Shai and J-Dub are the foundational pieces of the Thunder rebuild that are leading the charge today. This trade along with other key moves like trading Westbrook the same summer to Houston for CP3 gave them even more future picks as well.

Moving older vets like Steven Adams for future picks and rotational player Kenrich Williams allowed the Thunder to make even more splashes and dart throws in the rookie draft.

Last summer they also moved young guard Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso who is one of the best lockdown guard/wing defenders in basketball.

Getting Lu Dort as an undrafted free agent in 2019 was also a huge move for them. Since entering the league he’s been known as one of the peskiest defenders for opponents just like Caruso.

The past two seasons, he has also made incredible strides shooting the ball from 3. He’s improved his 3-point % from around 33% → 41% this season in just two years making him one of the best 3 and D players in the NBA.

Another incredible draft day move came in 2023 when the Thunder traded for Cason Wallace with the Mavs in exchange for Derrick Lively. Wallace has turned into a key rotational guard and is now leading the league in steals so far this year while playing just 29 minutes per game. He also shoots 37% from 3 and 90% from the free throw line.

In an era where iso ball and superstars usage rates being sky high is the norm, 3 bully ball in your fucking face defenders who love doing the dirty work on the perimeter is an incredible thing to have at your disposal.

The icing on the cake for the Thunder rebuild was getting Chet Holmgren in the 2022 draft locking in a franchise rim-protector and a huge defensive fucking nightmare for opponents as the 7 foot+ big can dribble, drive, bang 3’s, and pretty much do everything on offense.

In his 3rd season, the Thunder big is putting up 20 and 8 on 40% shooting from 3. Another big move OKC made prior to their 1st ring last summer was signing center Isaiah Hartenstein to a 3 year deal.

The young high upside core big 3 of SGA, Chet, and Jalen Williams was already in place as well as key rotational guys like Dort and Wallace. Getting Caruso via trade and Hartenstein via free agency last summer gave them league winning balance and versatility across the board.

Hartenstein serves as the big-body anchor to complement Chet allowing him to stretch the floor more while also playing off-ball on defense to come in for late blocks. He’s essentially the only major free agent they’ve signed in this core-building timeline, and not a super sexy one at that.

The biggest sleeper of a move OKC made during this timeline was acquiring guard Ajay Mitchell the 2nd round draft pick from the Knicks on draft night last year as well. Insane value and low risk.

Mitchell didn’t see the floor much last year, but was super efficient when he did. Flash forward to today and he’s putting up 16-4-3 while coming off the bench to start the season while J-Dub hasn’t even suited up yet this year battling injury.

As of today the Thunder sit at 14-1 to start the season. This is tied for the 5th best start to a season of all time, and tied with 20 other instances. Although, even taking into consideration the 5 times that teams started 15-0 in a season, the Thunder currently have the 4th best point differential ever through 15 games.

Their winning margin only trails behind the 96 Bulls, 69 Knicks, and 71 Bucks. The Bulls and Knicks both won championships those years. The Thunder are currently beating teams by an average of 15.5 points a game. Pure fucking dominance.

The scariest part of this torrid pace is that, like I previously mentioned Jalen Williams, their 2nd leading scorer hasn’t even played a single game yet. OKC is currently at +185 to win the NBA Finals with the 2nd best odds being the Nuggets at +500.

OKC’s big 3 has an average age of only 24.66. Their 10 man deep rotation has an average age of just 25.5. This team is gonna be around for a long ass time and is only getting better.

GM Sam Presti is the godfather and sick brain behind their incredible moves the past decade plus. Apart from these masterful veteran trades from 2019-2024 acquiring multiple future 1sts and 2nds that turned into key players on today’s squad, the Thunder are really fucking good at developing non-lottery pick talent.

Take Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe for instance. Both players were drafted 55 overall and 49 overall respectively in the 2021 and 2020 drafts. Wiggins spent early time in his career in the G-league and playing minimal minutes for the Thunder.

Today, he’s signed to a 5 year $47 million deal, extremely cheap for the value he brings as a reliable rotation player who is now putting up 15 PPG off the bench and shooting 42% from 3.

Joe is now locked into a 4 year $48 million deal another very cost effective deal for OKC and is also averaging a career high 15 PPG off the bench and shooting 40.5% from 3. Both players like Ajay Mitchell have seen their numbers rise due to J-Dub’s absence and will likely see them taper off once he returns.

What it does for them now though is allow the team to gain confidence with these rotational guys and increased minutes they haven’t seen before which will allow them to keep getting better, and be more ready for the big moment if someone ahead of them were to go down with an injury in the future.

I see no reason why this OKC team can’t go back to back this season. While a lot of the media hype is on SGA and Chet, arguably the biggest moves the team made in the past 6 years to really put them at championship level basketball all happened last summer when they got Hartenstein, Caruso, and Mitchell.

From the age standpoint alone of the current roster construction, there’s no reason why this team can’t be finals and championship contenders for at least the next 5 seasons and possibly more.

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention that is probably worth noting is that these fuckers also have up to 3 1sts in 2026, 2027, probably 2 in 2028, at least 2 in 2029, plus even more from 2030-2032 😂. The witchcraft that Presti and this organization has pulled on the rest of the NBA is historic. GG Thunder, GG.

Mr Chirp has decided to spend more time on individual pieces of the newsletter instead of trying to rush out daily sends. For the time being we will be doing sends Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! Enjoy your hump day and see you in a couple days Chirp Fam. Share the Daily Chirp with your homies for a chance to win your favorite jersey or tickets to a game! See ya next time.

-Mr Chirp