Oklahoma City Thunder

Published April 18, 2026 · Updated May 21, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

The Oklahoma City Thunder are the 2024-25 NBA champions, winning the 2025 NBA Finals 4-3 over the Indiana Pacers on June 22, 2025. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was Finals MVP and regular-season MVP. The franchise has a complicated continuity: it was founded in 1967 as the Seattle SuperSonics, won the 1979 NBA championship in Seattle, was sold to Clay Bennett’s Oklahoma City-based investor group in 2006, and was relocated to Oklahoma City in July 2008 after a controversial court settlement. The Thunder’s legal championship record therefore includes two titles (1979 and 2025), although the Seattle era is culturally treated as separate. The current ownership group is the Professional Basketball Club LLC, a coalition of Oklahoma-based energy and real-estate investors led by Bennett.

The Seattle SuperSonics (1967–2008)

The Seattle SuperSonics were an NBA expansion franchise, founded in 1967 under owner Sam Schulman. Full Seattle history here. Key Seattle moments: the 1978 and 1979 consecutive NBA Finals appearances (losing in 1978 to Washington in seven games, winning in 1979 over Washington in five games under head coach Lenny Wilkens), the 1996 NBA Finals appearance under George Karl (a 4-2 loss to the Chicago Bulls in Michael Jordan’s 72-win season), and the 2007 selection of Kevin Durant with the second overall pick.

Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO, purchased the Sonics in 2001 for $200 million. He failed to secure a publicly-financed arena replacement for the aging KeyArena. On October 31, 2006, Schultz sold the franchise to Clay Bennett’s Professional Basketball Club LLC for $350 million.

The controversial 2008 relocation

Bennett’s purchase agreement included a “good faith effort” to keep the team in Seattle through October 2007. Internal emails that surfaced during the 2008 lawsuit (published by The Seattle Times in April 2008) showed that Bennett and his investor partners, including Aubrey McClendon, had committed to relocating the team to Oklahoma City from before the acquisition. McClendon was fined $250,000 by the NBA for publicly stating in August 2007 that the franchise would move.

On July 2, 2008, the NBA Board of Governors approved the relocation by a 28–2 vote. The City of Seattle and King County filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit. The case settled on July 2, 2008 for $45 million and the return of the SuperSonics franchise name, colors, banners, and statistical records to a future Seattle franchise (currently unawarded). The Thunder took the 2008–09 season’s records forward but retained no retired-number history from the Seattle era.

The Thunder’s first season in Oklahoma City, 2008–09, produced a 23–59 record. The team played at the Ford Center.

The Durant-Westbrook-Harden era (2008–2012)

The 2008-09 Thunder rostered Kevin Durant (second overall, 2007), Russell Westbrook (fourth overall, 2008), Jeff Green, Serge Ibaka, and Nick Collison. James Harden was drafted third overall in 2009. Scott Brooks took over as head coach in November 2008 and steadied a young group that could have spun out in a 23-win first season. The 2009-10 Thunder went 50-32 and reached the playoffs. Durant had turned 21 that fall.

The 2011-12 Thunder went 47-19 in the lockout-shortened 66-game season and reached the NBA Finals, losing to the Miami Heat 4-1. Durant averaged 28.0 points per game in the regular season. Westbrook averaged 23.6. Harden won Sixth Man of the Year off the bench. The Finals loss to Miami was the first of what felt like several inevitable trips to the Finals. It was not. The franchise has not been back.

On October 27, 2012, the Thunder traded Harden to Houston for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, first-round picks from Toronto and Dallas, and one second-round pick. The organization declined to pay Harden’s reported four-year, $52 million extension ask as luxury-tax concerns loomed. The backlash was immediate. Harden won the MVP in 2017-18 and made eight All-Star teams after leaving. The picks came back eventually, but not as players.

The Durant-Westbrook Thunder reached the Western Conference Finals four times (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016). In 2014 they lost to San Antonio 4-2 in the conference finals as the Spurs dismantled their defense with ball movement. The 2015-16 Thunder led the Warriors 3-1 in the conference semis and lost the next three games, the first 3-1 conference-stage collapse by a road team since 1997. Durant announced his departure to Golden State on July 4, 2016, via an essay on The Players’ Tribune.

The Westbrook-MVP era and the Paul George trade

Russell Westbrook was the 2016–17 NBA MVP on a historically high usage rate; he averaged a triple-double for the season (31.6 / 10.7 / 10.4). It was the first triple-double-average season since Oscar Robertson in 1961–62. Westbrook repeated the triple-double average in 2017–18 and 2018–19.

In July 2017, the Thunder acquired Paul George from Indiana for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis, both of whom became All-Stars elsewhere. The George-Westbrook pairing produced two playoff first-round exits and a sense that the roster was misaligned. In July 2019 the Thunder traded George to the Clippers for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, and a record five first-round picks plus two pick-swaps. They also traded Westbrook to Houston for Chris Paul, two first-round picks, and two pick-swap rights. Sam Presti, the general manager since 2007, has publicly described the George trade as the operational reset of the franchise. By the summer of 2021, Oklahoma City had accumulated 36 total draft picks over seven years (18 first-round, 18 second-round), an unprecedented collection that shaped the rebuild entirely through the draft rather than free agency.

The SGA era and the 2025 championship

The 2019-20 through 2022-23 Thunder were a deliberate rebuild. The 2020-21 team went 22-50, the 2021-22 team went 24-58. Neither year was a failure; both were intentional, designed to protect high lottery positioning and the draft capital piling up. Josh Giddey was drafted sixth in 2021 as a 19-year-old Australian playmaker. The 2022 NBA Draft produced Chet Holmgren (2nd overall) and Jalen Williams (12th overall) in the same class, an extraordinary haul. Holmgren missed the entire 2022-23 season with a Lisfranc foot injury; Williams averaged 21.2 points per game as a rookie in 2022-23, earning All-Rookie First Team. When Holmgren returned in 2023-24, the combination of Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams, and Holmgren was the youngest core in the league and the most credibly dangerous.

The 2023-24 Thunder went 57-25, the West’s top seed. Gilgeous-Alexander was an All-NBA First Team selection and averaged 30.1 points per game. Holmgren, in his de facto rookie year, averaged 16.5 points and 7.9 rebounds while shooting 42 percent from three. The thunder were eliminated by the Mavericks in the second round, a loss that stung but did not slow the trajectory.

The 2024–25 Thunder went 68–14, the best regular-season record since the 2017–18 Warriors. They beat Memphis (4–0), Denver (4–2), and Minnesota (4–0) to reach the NBA Finals. Gilgeous-Alexander won the 2024–25 regular-season MVP in what was effectively a unanimous vote.

The 2025 NBA Finals against the Indiana Pacers went seven games. Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 30.3 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 1.8 steals across the series. Game 7, played at Paycom Center on June 22, 2025, ended 103–91 in the Thunder’s favor. It was the franchise’s first championship in its Oklahoma City identity, and the first for a team based in Oklahoma.

Ownership

The Professional Basketball Club LLC is led by Clay Bennett. Principal investors include Aubrey McClendon (co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, who died in a March 2016 car accident one day after being indicted on federal antitrust charges), Tom Ward (CEO of SandRidge Energy), Jeffrey Records Jr., Everett Dobson, and G. Jeffrey Records. The investor group’s wealth is concentrated in Oklahoma-based energy and real-estate holdings. The Thunder’s 2025 Forbes valuation was approximately $3.85 billion.

Retired numbers

Three jersey numbers have been retired:

• Gus Williams (1): Seattle era, 1979 championship
• Nate McMillan (10): Seattle era
• Lenny Wilkens (19): Seattle era, coaching banner

No OKC-era jersey has been retired. Kevin Durant’s 35 and Russell Westbrook’s 0 are presumed future retirements but are complicated by the Thunder’s public treatment of the Seattle-era legacy as culturally distinct.

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Sources

• Basketball-Reference, Oklahoma City Thunder franchise page
• The Oklahoman, Thunder beat coverage, 2008–present
• The Seattle Times, 2008 coverage of the Bennett-ownership email disclosure
• Sonicsgate documentary (Adam Brown, Jason Reid, 2009)
• NBA Board of Governors approval records, July 2, 2008
• Seattle-King County lawsuit settlement, July 2, 2008
• 2012, 2016, 2025 NBA Finals and Western Conference Finals box scores
• October 27, 2012 Harden trade records (Thunder-Rockets)
• Forbes NBA Team Valuations, 2025