America’s NBA team is playing Tuesday night in Las Vegas. I’m convinced the reason you don’t know them as America’s Team is because they haven’t been properly marketed. I just don’t see any other plausible reason.
I’m talking about the Oklahoma City Thunder. The same team that was somehow not selected among the 10 headliners to play on Christmas Day. The same team that is scheduled to be on national TV fewer times this season than the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Oklahoma City Thunder — a finalist in the NBA Cup championship game — should be an American sensation, yet it feels like they’re preposterously underexposed. While the Boston Celtics share many of the same homegrown juggernaut traits as OKC, they’ve occupied the national spotlight for years. This OKC team still seems under the radar.
This needs to change. The NBA should put every single one of their remaining games on national TV. Here are five reasons why:
1. They are really good at basketball. Historically good
The Thunder are 20-5 in the Western Conference which is like 25-0 in Eastern Conference currency. They have outscored opponents by 12.1 points every 100 possessions, which is the best net rating in the league and almost two full points better than the Boston Celtics’ 10.2 figure.
But that doesn’t even give OKC its proper due.
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To get a better idea of how good this OKC team is, we have to adjust for strength of schedule (i.e. they don’t get to play in the East). We can do that by looking at Simple Rating System (SRS), which accounts for opponent strength and can be found on Basketball Reference for every team dating back to 1946. The Thunder’s SRS stands at 11.94, which means they are about 12 points better than the average team, widening their aforementioned lead on Boston, which sits at 8.77 because of the schedule variable. The team with the best record in the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers, sits at 8.1.
Even with Chet Holmgren out for the majority of its games, OKC is lapping the competition. Through this prism, the distance between the Thunder and the Cavs is roughly the same as the Cavs and the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are 14-11.
But to fully understand how good this OKC team is, we can look at the number of teams who have finished a full season at an 11.94 SRS.
Here’s that list:
Oh, wait. Sorry. There isn’t a list.
If held for a full season, OKC would have the best SRS in NBA history. A whopping 17 of the Thunder’s 20 wins are by double-digits, which includes runaway wins over Houston (twice), Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and Orlando. Three of the Thunder’s five losses were one-possession games. To put it plainly, they are beating opponents so badly (and losing so sparingly) that they’re playing like the best regular-season team in NBA history.
But that’s not the only reason they should be featured on national TV more.
2. The NBA needs to invest in tomorrow
There will come a day when LeBron James and Stephen Curry aren’t playing in the NBA anymore. No one knows when that day will be, but we know this: The NBA is still all-in on the LeBron and Steph business. The 12-10 Lakers are slated to be on national TV an NBA-high 27 times this season, while the Golden State Warriors, at 14-11, are tied for second with the Boston Celtics at 26 national TV games. Think about that. The top three marquee TV slots are dedicated to the defending champion and two play-in teams.
Unfortunately, the NBA has to figure out what the post-LeBron and post-Steph era looks like. As such, the Thunder should be at or near the top of the list — not tomorrow, now. Instead, they rank eighth in national TV games (20) just behind New York (25), Dallas (24), Denver (22) and Philadelphia (21). Granted, the schedule-makers may have a fancy algorithm that programs an 82-game schedule for 30 teams and satisfies all the TV partners, but they don’t have a crystal ball. They can’t look into the future and predict with certainty how the season plays out.
[Devine: 3 big questions for Bucks-Thunder NBA Cup final]
But it’s not like the Thunder came out of nowhere this year. The Thunder were the West’s No. 1 seed last season with the second-youngest roster in the league! They weren’t just good; they had staying power. We’ve never seen a team this young and this good. They may not draw the largest TV ratings today, but it’d be wise to take a little hit on the audience size in the short-term and reap the long-term benefits of having American fans entrenched in Thunder vibes.
Speaking of vibes, let’s talk about the guy who was voted second in the MVP race last season.
3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is him
I mean, look at the guy. He wears sunglasses at night. He dons giant fur coats inside. I wish I could pull off half the fits he does (or just one). The NBA loves a news-conference fashion icon and SGA certainly delivers.
But it’s the basketball stuff. My god, the basketball stuff. The way he deftly uses speed and footwork to routinely butcher a five-man defense is sublime. The 26-year-old is averaging 30.3 points, 6.3 assists and 5.5 rebounds while shooting 58.3 percent on 2s, 34 percent on 3s and 86 percent on free throws. He’s once again among the league leaders in steals and a virtuoso in the open court.
The best way I can put it is this: SGA is at once the hot knife slicing through the stick of soft butter and also the stick of soft butter. If that makes sense.
And he’s always there. In an NBA beleaguered by stars missing games, he hasn’t missed a game yet this season. He’s a throwback and the future at the same time. Sometimes fans just need a star who shows up. He is him.
4. The Thunder play defense like there’s no tomorrow
A most common complaint about NBA basketball is that teams don’t play defense. A) That’s not true. B) If you believe that, then you clearly haven’t watched OKC.
I called them the OKC Dobermans on The Big Number last month for a reason. They get in your jersey and rip the ball away from opponents like it’s a sack of tennis balls. Of the top 11 players in steals per game this season, four of them play for the Thunder (minimum 300 minutes played): Jalen Williams (2.0 steals), Gilgeous-Alexander (1.9), Cason Wallace (1.8) and Alex Caruso (1.8). It’s not fair.
OKC opponents turn the ball over a league-high 19.1 times per game, two more than the next-highest defense. Put another way: In the same number of games, the Thunder have forced 154 more turnovers than the Milwaukee Bucks’ defense has.
The Thunder deeply understand the value of winning the turnover game. Through 25 games, they’re on pace to register 597 fewer turnovers than their opponents. The NBA record is 418, per Stathead tracking. Do you understand what I’m saying?
5. They are homegrown — and about to grow a whole lot more
If you’re not a fan of the player empowerment era where stars hop from one team to another, I get it. It might be unfamiliar and dizzying to keep up with. And guess what, do I have a team for you.
GM Sam Presti and the Thunder have put a premium on internal development. They drafted Chet Holmgren (2nd in 2022), Jalen Williams (12th in 2022) and Cason Wallace (10th in 2023). They traded for a 20-year-old Gilgeous-Alexander and paired him with an undrafted free agent named Lu Dort — the two have been chipping away at this since 2019-20 and fought through a 22-50 season together.
[Fact or Fiction: SGA is the best player left in the NBA Cup]
The team took a chance on a 29-year-old Mark Daigneault in 2014, naming him the head coach of its G League team. Six years later, he was promoted from within and eventually took over for Billy Donovan, becoming the second-youngest head coach in the NBA. Daigneault is now considered one of the league’s top coaches, winning Coach of the Year in 2023-24.
The organization’s biggest signing in free agency this summer, Isaiah Hartenstein, was a G League standout like Daigneault. After a successful stint with the Knicks, Hartenstein was rewarded with a three-year, $87 million contract in OKC, and it’s fitting and comical that a backup center is easily the biggest free-agent signing in franchise history.
The homegrown roster construction lends itself to some pretty wholesome moments. For instance, the OKC players insist on doing postgame interviews as a team, rather than featuring one individual. However, within the 48 minutes of game action, they let their play do the talking. They have four technical fouls as a team and one of them was on Dort kissing his three fingers after making a 3. Seriously.
Best of all, it still feels like we’re getting in early on the Thunder’s rise like it’s the second inning of a nine-inning game. They’re still the fourth-youngest team in the NBA, the Holmgren/Hartenstein combo hasn’t even played in the same game together and more elite draft picks are on the way. For instance, as a result of taking Al Horford’s contract back in 2020, the team owns Philadelphia’s top-six protected first-rounder in the upcoming draft. If that’s not enough, OKC can also move up to a second lottery pick with the LA Clippers’ swap rights (the Paul George trade keeps paying out in 2026, too).
There is no Right Way To Do It in sports, but the Thunder offer a blueprint for which other non-marquee teams can aspire. Inevitably, the team will get expensive when Holmgren and Williams’ extensions come due in 2026, but figuring out how to pay several All-Star-caliber players in two years is a good problem to have.
The Thunder don’t have to worry about that now. They have the Milwaukee Bucks on ABC on Tuesday night in the NBA Cup Final and an Orlando Magic tilt on TNT two days later. And then they go dark nationally. In the next month, dates against Memphis, Minnesota, the Clippers, New York (twice) and Boston aren’t on national TV.
That’s no way to treat America’s team.
