Clark Matthews: A Painful Thunder Postmortem

Losing is never fun.

Losing to a giant, arrogant Frenchman surrounded by a host of sycophants, up to and including the NBC game crew, is even less fun.

Repeating as champions was never going to be easy. The Thunder learned this the hard way. Winning the first ring was a slog that required physical exertion until late in June. The players then had a short window to rest their weary bodies before reporting to camp a couple months later.

The rest of the league got two more months of offseason compared to OKC, including the San Antonio Spurs who sat around waiting to win their third straight lottery while the Thunder fought arduous battles against the Nuggets, Timberwolves, and Pacers. Only one other team could empathize with such a grueling, strenuous ordeal, the 2025 Finals opponent Indiana. They only won 19 games this season.

It showed. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault never had his full array of roster talent to pull from. Even ignoring that their 2025 first round pick Thomas Sorber sat the entire season after tearing his ACL in post draft workouts, there were only a handful of games where no names joined Sorber on the injury list. Most of the time, those names included important contributors if not a host of important contributors.