OKLAHOMA CITY – The Oklahoma City Thunder enter this season with the memory of where the last one ended and the reality of how much has changed since.
Their playoff run fell short of the goal they had spent the season chasing, and the summer brought another kind of change as Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins left a group that had spent years growing together. Now, as the Thunder gather for another season, they are faced with the challenge every young team eventually encounters: taking everything they learned from the past without becoming trapped by it.
They aren’t starting from scratch. Instead, they’re starting again.
The departures were difficult to separate from the people behind them. Dort, Joe and Wiggins were part of the fabric of Oklahoma City’s rise, and their absence changes more than a rotation.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander captured that feeling when he talked about seeing familiar faces disappear from the room.
“It feels like they are not even gone,” Shai said.
“Like it feels like we are going to see them in a few minutes at team pictures.”
It was a revealing way to describe the NBA’s constant movement. One day someone is beside you every day, and the next, the routine remains while the person is gone.
That’s the part of roster turnover that numbers can’t explain. A player can replace minutes. A coach can replace a role. A front office can replace production. But there is no transaction for years of friendship, competition and shared experience.
Shai talked about the “brotherhood off the court” that develops inside a team, while Alex Caruso spoke about the “competitiveness” and “camaraderie” that made those relationships meaningful.
“It’s going to be different,” Caruso said.
“It’s already different being in the building for a couple days and not seeing those guys. You know, just miss the competitiveness, the camaraderie you have with guys that you’ve gone to war with and won and lost big games and spent countless hours on the road with.”
The Thunder know they have to move forward, but they also know that moving forward does not mean pretending nothing was lost. That may be why Mark Daigneault was so careful when discussing what the Thunder will look like this season.
There was no rush to declare who would replace Dort, no definitive statement about Cason Wallace’s role and no attempt to force Chet Holmgren into a particular position.
Daigneault’s message was instead about allowing the team to reveal itself.
“The more open that we can remain, the more we’re able to see clearly what’s in front of us,” he said.
He also cautioned against deciding too early what the team should be before the players have had a chance to show what they can become. For a team with so much talent, that openness might be more important than having every answer on the first day of training camp.
Oklahoma City has spent years developing players who could eventually handle bigger responsibilities, and now some of those responsibilities are arriving.
Wallace is one of the clearest examples. With Dort gone, it would be easy to frame Wallace as his replacement, but that would reduce the challenge in front of him to something it isn’t. Wallace doesn’t need to become Dort. He needs to become a better version of himself.
His response when asked about it reflected that mindset saying:
“Whenever he puts me out there, I’m going to put my best foot forward.”
It is not a promise about minutes or a demand for a role. It is simply an acknowledgment that opportunity only matters if you are prepared when it arrives.
The same philosophy surrounds Holmgren.
The Thunder have more front-court options than they did last season, and that creates questions about how the pieces will fit together. Holmgren could spend more time alongside another big, he could spend stretches at center, or he could move around depending on the matchup.
But when asked about his position, he offered an answer that says a great deal about his approach saying,
“I see myself doing whatever the team calls upon me to do and go out there and execute and help us win. I think we’ve learned over the last couple ‘years, you never know what the circumstances are going to look like.”
There is no need to define the player before seeing what the player can become. No matter how much the media or fans want them to.
That flexibility though has already proven useful.
Isaiah Hartenstein remembered the early days of playing alongside another big and admitted there was uncertainty about whether it would work at all.
Over time, however, the experiment became “actually one of our strengths,” according to Hartenstein.
That evolution is important because it represents the larger philosophy Oklahoma City seems to be embracing. The Thunder do not have to know exactly what something will become before they give it a chance to develop with Jalen Williams’ return adds another important layer to that process.
Williams spent much of last season unable to contribute on the floor, watching from the outside as the team moved forward without him. His return therefore feels less like the arrival of a new player and more like the return of a missing piece.
Yet his motivation was strikingly simple when he spoke about coming back.
“Yeah, I’m not anxious about it,” Williams said when asked if he was anxious about getting back on the court during training camp after missing so much time.
“I’m more excited to remind myself that I play basketball. I’ve never sat out that long. So I’m more just excited to go hoop again.,” Williams said later when asked if he was excited to remind everyone how good he is.
After spending so much time away from the game, the opportunity to simply play again carries its own significance.
That perspective fits with something Chet said about motivation. The natural reaction after a disappointing season is to let the outcome become fuel, to think about the loss, replay it and spend the summer trying to make sure it never happens again.
Holmgren described a different approach.
“I’ve tried to distance them from outcomes, good or bad,” he said.
The Thunder know they can compete. Now they have to learn how to handle the weight that comes with knowing it, again.
That is where last season’s ending becomes important without becoming all-consuming. Oklahoma City will learn from what happened, but Daigneault does not want one playoff series to dictate the identity of the entire team.
There is a difference between learning from a loss and allowing that loss to determine every decision that follows. The Thunder seem determined to find that balance. As Daigneault put it, they don’t want to be “chasing their shadow” by building everything around one opponent or one series.
Perhaps that is the most interesting thing about this version of Oklahoma City.
There is no desire to recreate the past perfectly. Dort cannot be replaced by simply finding another Dort. Joe cannot be replaced by finding another Joe. Wiggins cannot be replaced by pretending someone else is the same player. The Thunder have to take what those players gave them and allow the next group to build something different.
That is why Hartenstein’s description feels appropriate.
“We just want to come in, like we say, start from 0-0.”
It sounds simple, but there is freedom in it. Zero does not mean forgetting. It does not mean pretending last season didn’t happen or that the players who left didn’t matter. It means refusing to let the past dictate the future before the future has had a chance to arrive.
The Thunder know what they have lost. They know where last season ended. They know what the expectations will be when the games begin.
What they don’t know, and what no-one can know yet, is exactly what this new collection of players will become.
That answer will come slowly. It will come through practices and mistakes, through unexpected lineups and players taking unexpected steps forward. It will come through the moments when Cason Wallace is asked to do more, when Chet is asked to adjust, when Jalen Williams finds his rhythm again, when McCain discovers what his role can become and when the veterans help another young player understand what the NBA demands.
For now, the Thunder are standing in that space between what they were and what they will be. The old team is still visible in the memories, but the new one is beginning to take shape.
And maybe that is the point of starting from zero. Not to erase the past.
To give the future room to breathe.
