The Thunder's 2026 Playoff Run: SGA, Chet Holmgren, and OKC's Next Dynasty

Published May 9, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

The Oklahoma City Thunder entered the 2026 NBA Playoffs as the top seed in the Western Conference. They are currently in the second round, up 2-0 on the Los Angeles Lakers, having swept the Phoenix Suns in the first round. In the first-round closeout game, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 42 points on 15-of-18 shooting with 11-of-12 from the free-throw line. Two rounds in, the Thunder have lost two games. Their defensive rating in the playoffs is the best in the field.

This is the team Sam Presti spent four years building after the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook eras ended. The result, in 2026, is a franchise that looks like a dynasty in formation rather than a team that peaked early.

How the roster was built

After James Harden was traded to Houston in 2019, OKC pivoted deliberately toward youth and picks. Presti collected draft capital across multiple trades, including the massive haul from the Chris Paul deal with Phoenix and the picks embedded in the Kemba Walker trade with Boston. By 2022, Oklahoma City had the most future draft picks of any team in the league.

They drafted Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in 2018 and traded for him from the Clippers the same summer. They drafted Luguentz Dort in the undrafted pool in 2019. They selected Josh Giddey with the sixth pick in 2021. They selected Chet Holmgren with the second pick in 2022, a year before his ankle injury cost him an entire season. And they surrounded all of it with a coaching staff that emphasized defensive principles, pace control, and a clear offensive hierarchy with SGA at the top.

SGA: the undisputed center

Gilgeous-Alexander is the engine and the identity. He averaged 31.6 points, 6.5 assists, and 4.4 rebounds on 55 percent shooting in 2025–26. His back-to-back MVP seasons are the first consecutive MVP wins by a player from a non-major market since Moses Malone won two in a row for Houston in 1981 and 1982. He is 27 years old.

The interesting thing about SGA in the 2026 playoffs is that the Thunder are succeeding even in stretches when he’s on the bench. The Suns series produced multiple winning second-unit runs without him on the floor. That depth, the ability to hold leads and build margins without relying on SGA’s 42 points every game, is what separates the 2026 Thunder from the 2019–22 version of OKC that had Gilgeous-Alexander but very little around him.

Chet Holmgren and the defensive identity

Chet Holmgren missed the entire 2022–23 season with an ankle injury suffered in a charity game. He returned in 2023–24, played well, and has grown into one of the most versatile defensive players in the league. At 7’1” with a 7’6” wingspan and the mobility to switch onto guards in the pick-and-roll, he gives Oklahoma City a defense that has answers for the specific things that make teams hard to guard in the playoffs.

Holmgren and Wembanyama represent the two ends of the spectrum for what modern centers who can protect the rim while staying connected to the action in space look like. Holmgren is the earlier model, still a work in progress offensively, but his 2026 playoff performance has been the secondary driver of Oklahoma City’s defensive dominance.

The Lakers series

The Thunder opened the second round against the Los Angeles Lakers. Los Angeles had LeBron James in his twenty-third season and Anthony Davis, who returned from a mid-season trade and has been playing the best basketball of his post-Pelicans career. The Lakers finished as the fourth seed in the West.

OKC won Game 1, 108–90. Game 2 was 125–107. The Thunder have held the Lakers below 110 points in both games. SGA is averaging 36 points in the series. Davis has been good but the surrounding cast around him in L.A. has not been good enough.

Game 3 is Saturday, May 9, in Los Angeles.

What a Thunder championship would mean

Oklahoma City has never won an NBA championship. The closest they came was the 2012 Finals, when they lost to the Miami Heat in five games with Kevin Durant at 23 and Russell Westbrook at 23. That team, in retrospect, was too young and too dependent on two stars and not enough depth to win it all. The Durant-era Thunder went to the Finals once and exited in the first or second round in every other year of their prime, before Durant left for Golden State in 2016 and the rebuild began.

The 2026 team is different in structure. The depth is real. The role players, Dort on defense, a core of second-unit players who can hold leads, give OKC a team identity that doesn’t collapse without SGA producing 40 points. And SGA at 27 is a better player than Durant at 23 in terms of his postseason performance, which is a sentence that would have been written off as internet hyperbole three years ago and now seems like an accurate description of what the 2026 playoffs are showing.

If they win the championship this year, it would be the culmination of a four-year, fully intentional rebuild. It would be the first championship for the franchise and for the city of Oklahoma City. It would make Sam Presti’s front-office work the best front-office story in the sport since the San Antonio Spurs built the Tim Duncan dynasty in the late 1990s.

They are two rounds in. The path is clear. The execution is the only remaining question.