How the Thunder stole an NBA championship

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — The Thunder arena scoreboard might be the only one in the NBA which eschews typical box score stats in exchange for providing attendees with Four Factors, and an insight toward why the Thunder are what they roll.

The Four Factors, an advancement coined in the last century by writer (and former Seattle SuperSonics employee) Dean Oliver, are Effective Field Goal Percentage, Turnover Percentage, Offensive Rebounding Percentage, and Free Throw Rate. The Thunder want their fans to know about these marks ahead of the ongoing game’s raw box score totals. If you sought to discover how many actual turnovers T.J. McConnell had in Game 7, tough luck, but the scoreboard does tell you each game’s most pertinent percentages.

One can imagine which percentage pops the most. The Indiana Pacers, fourth-best in the NBA in turnover rate in 2024-25 (11.8 percent), were routinely in the 20s throughout the 2025 Finals, nearing 22 percent in Game 7’s defeat. Sometimes the numbers closed as the contest moved along, witness Indiana’s Game 1 win and near-comeback in Game 5, but the point held. Anyone absorbing Four Factors for the first time would develop an idea of what was good (OKC’s turnover rate) and what was bad (Indiana doubling, tripling and sometimes quadrupling the home team’s figure).

The Thunder’s defense this season was the striking. The best the NBA’s seen in ages, certainly its most devastating since the Spurs and Pistons struck fear and disorder into opponents’ forever factors, let alone the four-most important. Cruelly, OKC’s most analogous previous-century form reminds of the Gary Payton and George Karl-era Seattle SuperSonics. The Thunder, who moved to Oklahoma City in 2008 from Seattle, kinda are the Seattle SuperSonics, but not really.

The prevailing idea that NBA commissioner Adam Silver will soon (re-)reward Seattle with an expansion franchise helps us mention the word “Seattle” in the first place, otherwise we’d omit discussing the lost franchise for fear of causing genuine hurt to SuperSonics fans. The Sonics wuz stolen, no two ways about it, cruel irony for a team routinely at the top of the leaderboard in steals.

Seattle had to steal the ball because it never had a center. That’s the other tall irony in this Finals win, spotting Oklahoma City with one impressive tower, adding another, creating its breakthrough with two pivotmen at a time, two centers striding to the championship podium postgame. Enviable luxury to compare to a SuperSonics team which spent 32 years trying to replace All-Star center Jack Sikma.

It wasn’t just Jim McIlvaine, paid $3 million by Seattle in 1996-97 to push the defending Western champion SuperSonics over the top. Shawn Kemp was paid $3.3 million that season for Seattle and the difference was a little too close for Shawn, who was traded before 1997-98 for Vin Baker. Baker was a power forward who won a playoff series starting at center, so that worked for one round, until Shaq.

From there, the franchise went a-draftin’ for its bigs: Vladimir Stepania, Jelani McCoy, Nick Collison, Robert Swift, Johan Petro, Mouhamed Sene all earned first-round round picks (McCoy was selected No. 33) from 1998 through 2006, only one of them worked out.

Nick Collison’s jersey is the only retired number hanging in Oklahoma City’s arena rafters. I stared at it for four Finals games, I still can’t remember his number.

Collison started 55 games in ten seasons with the Thunder, never averaged double-figure points, and he is absolutely the avatar OKC needed dangling over it: Collison moved his feet like few other defenders in the NBA, he communicated and disrupted. He was everything the Thunder tries to be in 2025.

Now? OKC is replete with bigs: Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. Jalen Williams is a 2020s-styled power forward yet the Thunder push him out to the wing, where J-Dub often revealed Pacer small forward Aaron Nesmith to be more of a small shooting guard.

The modern Thunder are remarkably pliant. Unlike a Tom Thibodeau outfit, the group owns the dynamism enough to adapt, only occasionally enforce. With lineups, with efforts, with execution, it’s all up in the air as to how they’ll stop this, but they will stop this.

Want some above the break threes? They don’t care. Need to work the ball inside? Not their problem. Require spacing the floor, asking the ball to dance around? OKC is not here to help you make a memory.

The Pacers were launching from a stumble throughout the Finals. So happy to gather the ball without a bobble or disruption that the Indiana driver’s body and ball would move well before the wheels started rolling. It takes so much just to successfully meet and catch the pass, anything after post-accomplishment bliss, juice from the burger rolling down to cool your chin. By the time you meet the napkin, Lu Dort has the ball.

Indiana was the fifth-best team at protecting the ball in the 2024-25 regular season, they turned it over 16 percent of the time against OKC, a mark that would rank last in the league by a wide chunk. The Pacers worked in extreme humidity, a daunting dew point and a slippery basketball, while Oklahoma City’s rock felt bone-dry.

The last team to cause this much dampness? George Karl’s SuperSonics forced a turnover in 18.1 percent of possessions in 1993-94 (Orlando led the NBA this season with 15 percent), made the Finals in 1996 causing turnovers on over 16 percent of possessions.

The NBA hasn’t been as sticky since. Rick Pitino brought a steal-seeking defense to his Celtics 1997 and was darn near immediately chased out of the NBA. Boston turned teams over 19 percent of the time in 1997-98 but ranked only No. 16 defensively and other coaches noticed. Increased efficiency and volume from behind the three-point arc, arguably, mollified a swiping and stealing team’s best chance at winning. The No-Stats All-Star era took hold, teams went after contested attempts and certain rebounds, not outright theft of possession.

Mark Daigneault’s Thunder didn’t set to remind of Seattle, coach simply works his advantage. His two-finest scorers, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (No. 10), Jalen Williams (No. 9), rank highly in steal rate, a Jordan-era Chicago Bulls-type boast. Those Bulls never had a Cason Wallace (No. 3 in 2024-25 steal rate) springing off the bench, let alone two centers with top-16 (Hartenstein) and top-two (Holmgren) block rate.

That Indiana routinely penetrated OKC’s best defensive efforts only highlights the little that lacked. The inconsistent Thunder’s thirst for the jugular, an actual execution of that whole insouciant despoiler routine the players work at the podium postgame. So they don’t like to show their teeth until it is time to bite, so what?

They like each other. If they have a problem, they’ll trade a first-round draft pick. If they need to save money, they’ll use a first-round draft pick. If that draft pick doesn’t work out, Sam Presti always has second-rounders step up and into the rotation. Alex Caruso has yet to teach them about the foibles of repeating, and the Thunder (famously free of alcohol until Sunday night) have yet to feel a hangover. The pain that tells you it was worth it.

Oklahoma City thought they’d earned a target on their uniforms with last year’s Western finals trip and they were wrong, 2025-26 will provide a challenge unlike anything in league history. The Thunder defending a precocious title that despite its twentysomething employ did not come easy, ran all the way to seven games.

Enough legs to steal a back-to-back? Better take a chair to the parade.