2025 Thunder looking like mirror image of 2015 Warriors as they set sights on first NBA championship

The Oklahoma City Thunder are headed to their first NBA Finals as a franchise since 2012 after eliminating the Minnesota Timberwolves, 124-94, in Game 5 on Wednesday night. OKC will face either the Pacers (who lead the Eastern Conference finals 3-1) or the Knicks in the Finals, where they will set their sights on the first title in Oklahoma City history.

The Thunder are heavy NBA title favorites (-575 to win the championship at DraftKings), and let’s stress that this isn’t a done deal. The Pacers, assuming they eventually finish off the Knicks, are playing lights out right now. 

But in watching this Oklahoma City run this point, it’s impossible to ignore the 2014-15 Warriors vibes that are all over this team. The Stephen Curry-led Warriors won their first Western Conference finals on May 27, 2015 — 10 years and one day earlier than the Thunder’s win on Wednesday night.

But these teams don’t just have a similar feel to them in terms of their sort of step-skipping path to contention, the development of homegrown talent, or the joy they derive from playing not just with one another, but for one another; the rosters and future foundational models are damn near mirrors of each other. Let’s take a look. 

First-time MVPs

The most obvious commonality between this year’s Thunder and the 2014-15 Warriors: A first-time MVP at the helm. For OKC, it’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is 26 years old and two years removed from his first All-Star selection. For the Warriors it was Stephen Curry, who was also 26 years old and two years removed from his first All-Star selection. 

SGA and Curry rely on different forms of dominance. SGA is the league’s best driver; Curry is the league’s best shooter. SGA has become a good enough shooter to keep defenses honest; Curry did the same with his driving. It all adds up to the same thing: A virtually unstoppable, score-first point guard who facilitates offense for all his teammates by virtue of his individual threat level and the gravity it creates. 

SGA has an edge over Curry in almost all the traditional and advanced numbers, but the raw scoring stands out the most. Curry didn’t become a 30-point scorer until the following season. Does that mean this year’s SGA was a better player than 2014-15 Curry? It’s certainly debatable. But the point is, both followed a similar path to their first MVP, bursting onto the scene two years prior before rising to MVP in their age-26 season. Curry added a first championship trophy to his first MVP. SGA is four wins from following suit. 

Top-ranked defense

The foundation of OKC’s dominance has been its defense. The same was true of the 2014-15 Warriors, who led the league in defensive rating despite being more widely known, or at least celebrated, for their Splash Brothers-led offense. 

Oklahoma City’s offense, though a top-three unit, isn’t as flashy as Golden State’s was, so it’s perhaps easier to appreciate the merits of its top-ranked defense, but the characteristics are largely the same as Golden State’s in terms of, first and foremost, its stable of 6-foot-5 to 6-foot-8ish wings who throw waves of pressure at ball handlers while having the capacity to switch everything both on and off ball. The disruptive force of this pressure is palpable — 17.0 turnovers created per game for OKC, 16.2 for the Warriors. 

For the Warriors, this stable included Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Shaun Livingston. For the Thunder, it’s Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, Alex Caruso, SGA, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins. 

Another commonality? Behind all this perimeter depth, both the Thunder and the Warriors present(ed) and elite rim protector on the back side — Chet Holmgren and, to a slightly lesser degree, Isaiah Hartenstein in OKC and Andrew Bogut (you forgot about him, didn’t you?) in Golden State. 

Accounting for the uptick in pace and overall scoring, you can see that OKC has actually been an even better defense as compared to league average (+7.4 to Golden State’s +5.3), but the point is, in both characteristics and effectiveness, defensive dominance was/is at the core of both these teams. In fact, OKC is attempting to become the first team to win the title with the league’s No. 1 ranked defense since the 2014-15 Warriors. 

The second All-Star

Alongside Curry and Gilgeous-Alexander, both teams were looking for a second All-Star to emerge. The Warriors hit on Klay Thompson with the No. 11 pick in 2011. The Thunder grabbed Jalen Williams at No. 12 in 2022. The Warriors’ first championship, not coincidentally, lined up with Thompson’s first All-Star selection in 2015, and if Oklahoma City finishes this thing off, it will also have happened in the year of Williams’ first All-Star selection. 

Yes, both these guys were lottery picks so it’s hard to say their All-Star ascension was a total surprise, but they were both looked at as sort of coin-flip prospects. Certainly not sure things. But their rapid development as two-way stars cemented and expedited the championship-contending timeline of both the Warriors and Thunder. 

The hidden gem

With so many of these largely home-grown championship-contending teams, a common denominator is the pop of that late draft pick nobody saw coming. The Warriors stumbled onto their hidden gem in Draymond Green with the 35th overall pick. The Thunder dug even deeper for Lu Dort, who went undrafted before signing a G-League deal with OKC in 2019. 

Green went on to become arguably the best defender of his generation. Dort isn’t quite at that level, but he’s one of the best perimeter defenders in the league. Both are the kind of found money that ends up funding so many title teams. Green made first-team All-Defense for the first time in 2015 and the Warriors won the title. Dort did the same this season. The Pacers or Knicks are still standing in the way, but so far it’s all tracking for OKC. 

The 26-or-under core

What was so exciting about the 2015 Warriors was the youth of the roster and the opportunity to turn one title into multiples titles. For Golden State, the three leading scorers, and three best players, were 26 years old or younger (Curry, Thompson and Green). The same is true for the Thunder with Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren. 

The Warriors were able to add Kevin Durant in 2016 in part because Thompson and Green were still on rookie contracts (and Curry was on one of the most team-friendly deals in sports history), and OKC has the capacity, mostly with an unending supply of draft capital, to add a major star to this current team as well should it make sense from the standpoint of both fit and forecast. 

Either way, this is not a one-and-done situation. Whether Oklahoma City finishes off this title or not, or if they add another major piece go the path of core cohesion supplemented by cheap rookie deals with all those draft picks, the path is paved for a long run of top-tier contention, just as it was for the Warriors. 

Playoff Paths

• Both teams teams swept their first round series: Golden State over New Orleans. OKC over Memphis. 

• Both teams won their conference finals in five games: Golden State over Houston. OKC over Minnesota. 

• Both teams had their toughest pre-Finals series in the second round: Golden State went down 2-1 to the Grizzlies before rallying to win in six. OKC needed seven games to get past Denver.

The 2015 Warriors and the 2025 Thunder are extremely similar teams who traveled a similarly expedited path to the league’s upper echelon. The masses weren’t ready to accept how good the Warriors were, invoking the lazy “too young” and “not quite ready” qualifiers until they no longer had a choice when Golden State was holding up the trophy (and even then they tried to say they got lucky with opponent injuries). 

The OKC doubt hasn’t been quite as loud, but it’s been there all season. Sports talk shows have been dominated by the “are they ready?” conversation, and generally speaking there was a wait-and-see attitude that seemingly leaned more toward lumping Oklahoma City with all the other  good Western Conference teams that supposedly comprised a “wide-open race.” 

It was never as open as people wanted it to be. It’s true, the league has become defined by its parity, but the parity existed below OKC, which, all season, was a level above everyone else in the conference. Whether it’s against Indiana or New York, the only thing left to prove is that they were the best team in the league all along with a Finals victory. 

What’s already easy to see, however, is that even if OKC does win the whole thing, there will be conversations about whether they got a little lucky. It will be stupid, but nonetheless you can bet people will be talking about how Ja Morant got hurt in the first round, and they didn’t have to face the Warriors because Stephen Curry got hurt and the Celtics burned out, and instead of the 64-win Cavaliers they got the Pacers or the Knicks. You can already see the “bracket broke their way” narrative taking shape. 

The same thing happened to the Warriors, who, perhaps because people wanted feel like they were right about them not being as good as the hype, were undersold by a fairly loud contingent as a circumstantial champion — one that benefitted from significant opponent injuries throughout their playoff run. This was a big reason by the Warriors came out the next season, in 2015-16, and set an NBA record with 73 wins, because all the talk about their first title being even somewhat lucky planted the chip squarely back on their collective shoulder. 

If OKC finishes off this title and this good-fortune narrative does indeed find some life, it will be interesting to see how they come out next season. Because again, this team, like the 2015 Warriors, is set up to do this for years to come.