It’s Thunder or Bust Now

The 2025 NBA playoffs have chewed up and spat out the top seeds — except OKC. With 60%+ title odds, the Thunder are carrying the torch for the favorites solo.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder reacts after scoring during the fourth quarter of Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets on May 18, 2025. (Joshua Gateley/Getty Images)

Though they made things interesting throughout the Western conference semis — falling behind the Denver Nuggets 2-1 to begin the series, then losing Game 6 to face elimination in Sunday’s Game 7 — the Oklahoma City Thunder won out in the end, erasing an early deficit and blowing open what was once a close contest with an 83-52 run over the final 30 or so minutes of the game. Presumptive league MVP¹ Shai Gilgeous-Alexander outplayed rival Nikola Jokić, finishing with 35 points and helping OKC seize control of the game during that decisive second-quarter surge.

With the victory, the Thunder advance to the Western conference finals as the only member of what I’ve been calling the 2024-25 regular season’s “holy trinity” of favorites — OKC, Boston and Cleveland — to survive one of the most unpredictable second rounds in modern NBA playoff history. No offense to Minnesota, Indiana or New York, but after the learning experience of last year’s playoffs and a regular season spent gearing up to avoid a repeat upset, Oklahoma City now finds itself staring at a 2025 NBA title that’s theirs for the taking — if they’re ready for it.

As of right now, OKC is a huge championship favorite according to the models — like ESPN’s BPI (64 percent) — the prediction markets — such as Polymarket (62 percent) — and mixtures of both — like my NBA forecast (68 percent). No other member of this year’s NBA Final Four is above the 15-percent range, which makes sense when we consider that the Thunder had a +12.8 net rating during the regular season, the highest since the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls,² while no other remaining squad was better than Minnesota at +5.1. And despite their hiccups at times against Denver, OKC also leads the 2025 playoffs in net rating at +12.8, an improbably identical mark to their regular-season number.

We can see how OKC has stood head and shoulders above the other three surviving teams all season by looking at the progression of each team’s Polymarket odds from the start of the season through Monday afternoon:

At no point since October 6 have either the Knicks, Pacers or T-Wolves had a higher implied probability to win the NBA title than the Thunder, and at no point during the calendar year of 2025 were any of those teams within even single-digits of OKC’s championship odds. The average gap from OKC to the average of MIN/IND/NYK each day of the season was 19.8 percentage points in favor of the Thunder, and the average gap since Jan. 1 is 27.1 percentage points.

So again, this is Oklahoma City’s moment — by the numbers, by the markets, by the narrative… you name it. And as we alluded to above, it makes logical sense. If previous track records mean anything at all, the Thunder ought to have a glide path to the title from here.

But do previous track records mean anything this postseason?