The NBA hasn’t seen a repeat champion since 2018. This year, the Oklahoma City Thunder will look to buck that trend.
After a season in which their top player won MVP, and they endured two seven-game playoff series, the Thunder emerged as the 2025 champions. But with new challengers capturing the nation’s imagination, one analyst believes they are being discounted a little too much approaching this year’s playoffs.
Danny Parkins Believes Thunder Have Recipe to Repeat
So far this season, it hasn’t seemed unreasonable to believe that the Thunder could replicate last year’s success. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been just as dominant, with the team boasting a league-best 64-16 record.
However, with the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics failing to make it back to the conference finals since their 2023 and 2024 titles, there are some reservations about what OKC can do in the postseason.
The Nuggets already pushed the Thunder to seven games last year. Meanwhile, the San Antonio Spurs have been hot on their heels all season long and dominated their regular-season matchup, with fans starting to see potential pathways to OKC not repeating.
However, Danny Parkins of FS1’s “First Things First” doesn’t think the situation is all too complicated. On Wednesday’s episode, he defended the Thunder, claiming they have been overlooked by the vast majority of fans and pundits.
“I still think we as a show and as a basketball populace are underrating the Thunder. Maybe because of style points, maybe because of market size, we need something to talk about,” Parkins theorized, before coming to his case that “they are a perfectly constructed basketball team.”
“I still think we….are underrating the Thunder maybe because of style points, maybe because of market size…They are a perfectly constructed basketball team.”@DannyParkins is taking OKC over the field to win the Title: pic.twitter.com/7DSrSvlrlz
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) April 8, 2026
Breaking down the stats, he showed how eerily similar the team has been to last season. This year, they have the seventh-highest offensive rating in the league (117.9), along with the far-and-away best defensive rating (105.9).
“They are doing basically the same thing this year as last year, except the majority of the time without who I would say is their second-best player, Jalen Williams,” Parkins pointed out.
Explaining their underrated status, the analyst broke down what he believes makes the Thunder the “perfect team.”
“Their youth, their defense, their consistent dominance, their MVP player, I don’t really see a flaw in the team,” Parkins reasoned.
Parkins’ argument is an extremely solid one, especially given how the Thunder’s season has played out thus far.
But similar cases were true for the previous two champions as well. Neither has made it back to the conference finals yet, so the chips are stacked against OKC if it wants to cement itself as the first team to repeat as champions in almost a decade.
