OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The promise came three years ago from Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti. It might have been overlooked for a couple of reasons. One, the Thunder were awful at the time. Two, he was speaking Latin.
"Labor omnia vincit," Presti said after the 2021-22 season, quoting a motto of Oklahoma. Depending on how Presti was translating it, it could have been "hard work conquers all" or "slow work conquers all."
Either way, it applies to the Thunder. They did hard work. They did slow work.
They conquered all.
The Thunder — three years removed from winning 24 games — won 84 games this season and are NBA champions after beating the Indiana Pacers in a seven-game NBA Finals slugfest. For the rest of the NBA, this should be a scary development. They have the MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He and all of Oklahoma City's key players are under contract for next season, there's a 2024 lottery pick in Nikola Topic who didn't even play this season because of a torn ACL and the Thunder currently have two picks in the top 24 in this year's draft as well.
They are young; their starters, right now, are 27, 26, 26, 24 and 23. They are bold. And they might — should — be contending for a while.
"We definitely still have room to grow," said Gilgeous-Alexander, the MVP, the NBA Finals MVP, the league's scoring champion and now, an NBA champion as well. "That's the fun part of this. So many of us can still get better. There's not very many of us on the team that are in our prime or even close to it. We have a lot to grow, individually and as a group. I’m excited for the future of this team. This is a great start, for sure."
And the timing of them hitting this sort of stride is pretty good, too.
Plenty of teams have questions going into next season. Oklahoma City isn't one of them. Jayson Tatum in Boston, Damian Lillard in Milwaukee and now Tyrese Haliburton in Indiana all have Achilles injuries and figure to miss most if not all of next season. The Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James will be going into his 23rd season. Golden State's Stephen Curry is turning 38 next season. Kevin Durant, now of Houston (in a trade that's going to be official in the coming weeks), is going into his 18th season. Philadelphia's hopes hinge on Joel Embiid coming back healthy. New York will be dealing with a coaching change.
Oklahoma City seems to have everything right in place.
"They have a lot of great players on this team," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.
Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren all seem to enjoy playing with and off one another, none of them caring who gets credit. Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein fit seamlessly into the roles the Thunder asked them to play. Luguentz Dort is a defensive machine and has come to realize that most people don’t have the ability to appreciate how good he is at that end.
It's not just the players who don't care about puffing out their own chests. Same goes for the leadership.
"You're not guaranteed anything in the league," Caruso said. "I think that's the biggest thing that happens year to year that people forget about. Any moment your team can change with a trade, with an injury, with something that's out of your control. To be able to get to the pinnacle of this sport and win it is nothing short of extraordinary. To think that you can just walk in and do it every single year is a little bit naïve. Rest assured, we'll show up Day 1 next year ready to get better and ready to chase this again."
Presti, the architect of it all, rarely speaks publicly. Same goes for Clay Bennett, the owner. And coach Mark Daigneault is the calm in the eye of any storm, the perfect driver of the Thunder bus.
"There’s no guarantee you end it the way that we did,” Daigneault said. “I just wanted it so bad for them. I was just so thrilled that we were able to get that done and they get to experience this because they deserve it. The way they approach it, the professionalism, competitiveness, team-first nature, like I said, I wanted it so bad for them."
The journey isn’t over for the Thunder. It’s just starting. Presti has a war chest filled with draft picks and the team has some financial flexibility to add a piece if it so chooses. And now there’s a title to defend.
Labor omnia vincit. There’s more work to do.
"We have a lot of hard work in front of us,” Presti said that day in 2022. “We have to grind in and do it. That’s what the state is about. That’s what the history of the community is about. That’s what the basketball team here is about."
