The league hasn\u2019t had a repeat champion since the 2017-18 Warriors. The level-headed, consistent Thunder may be the ones to change that<\/p>\n
The NBA has not seen a reigning champion take its title defense as far as the conference finals, let alone hoist a second consecutive Larry O\u2019Brien trophy, since the Golden State Warriors were cut off at the ankle and calf<\/a> by the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 Finals. That\u2019s seven straight seasons in which parity has ruled supreme, for better or for worse, and dynastic runs seem fated to be a thing of the past.<\/p>\n Not if one team in America\u2019s heartland has anything to say about it. The Oklahoma City Thunder embark on these 2026 playoffs in search of historic greatness, trends be damned. And less than two weeks before the first game of the postseason tips off, you\u2019d be hard pressed to find substantive evidence to believe their goal won\u2019t be achieved.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The league hasn\u2019t had a repeat champion since the 2017-18 Warriors. The level-headed, consistent Thunder may be the ones to change that The NBA has not seen a reigning champion take its title defense as far as the conference finals, let alone hoist a second consecutive Larry O\u2019Brien trophy, since the Golden State Warriors were … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}