Post-Champion Era: The Thunder that Breaks the Defending Destiny!

In 2019, the NBA entered a new era of reorganization of the championship territory. This year, the Toronto Raptors won the championship, ending the Golden State Warriors' four-year three-time championship dominance. But unfortunately, the Raptors failed to defend their title successfully in the future. After that, no other team was able to complete the defending championship. In seven years, seven different championship teams have appeared. Among these seven championship teams, not to mention defending their championships, no one can even return to the finals stage successfully in the season after winning the championship. The 2020 champion Los Angeles Lakers are the closest team. They reached the Western Conference Finals in 2023 after winning the championship, but were eventually swept out.

The reasons behind this situation are not difficult to understand. The rules of the league are gradually becoming increasingly unfavorable for teams to win consecutive championships, especially for those teams that have repeatedly fallen into the quagmire of luxury tax in order to maintain the top lineup, the NBA has imposed severe penalties. Now that we want to maintain stable competitiveness in the long run, the key is to constantly update the lineup. This requirement is a big challenge for most teams.

But this situation seems to be gradually showing signs of being broken in front of the 2025 championship team Thunder. After winning the championship, the Thunder still holds a large number of future draft assets, which also means that they can make a second-value trade-off when core players become unaffordable.

Of course, from the moment, restructuring the lineup is not the most ideal situation for the Thunder. The Thunder has a better chance of breaking the challenge of not being able to win consecutive championships than champion teams such as the Raptors, Lakers, Warriors, Bucks, Nuggets, and Celtics. However, to achieve this, the team must be stable enough in trading operations, and the further down the road, the team's environment will only become more and more severe.

Celtics are the best case. This team that won the championship a year ago has now broken down its winning lineup one by one. Holiday and Posses are important contributors to help them reach the top, but both of them have left the team at present. In these two deals, the Celtics exchanged for Simmons Jr., George Nyan, and several draft picks.

For the current Celtics, it is to completely give up the next season and free up salary space, and perhaps have the opportunity to rebuild a championship-level team in the future. Although it is uncertain whether it can return to the finals and win the championship, this situation is much better than other previous champion teams. After winning the championship, the Raptors only broke through the first round once; the Bucks were the same. The only team that fell after winning the championship and finally returned to glory is the Golden State Warriors. They suffered a brief downturn after winning the championship in 2018 and were once again crowned in 2022.

In the two seasons before returning to the championship, the Warriors' winning rate was only 35%, and their ability to make a comeback was mainly centered around Curry, Clay, and Green. In addition to the core lineup, Wiggins, Poole, Otto Porter and others are important supporting roles.

From the previous example, this is probably the reconstruction direction of the Celtics imitated next. However, compared to the Warriors, they still retained the core lineup team after winning the championship. This is difficult for the Celtics to imitate, but they still have the opportunity to try it out. In addition to the Warriors, the other route left is the Denver Nuggets. After winning the championship, they watched several rotation veterans transfer and leave the team, and the five starting players were retained in the main lineup. For the next two consecutive years, the Nuggets stopped in the second round of tiebreak, and these two outs were largely due to the lack of rotation depth.

This is the butterfly effect brought by the league rules, and even other situations are even more serious. With Antetokounmpo in hand, the Bucks' combat power after winning the championship was seriously weakened and they were eliminated in the middle of the playoffs many times; while the Raptors were even more in chaos after winning the championship. Even though they were in the weak East, they still missed the playoffs for three consecutive years, and their road to return was still slim.

In contrast, the Thunder have a lot of best answers to the rules of the league, from players' combat power to draft pick chips. Even if they have paid huge contracts for the three core members of Alexander, Jewish and Chet, they have a chance to rely on the chips in their hands to push the side effects after winning the championship as much as possible.

From the perspective of team building ideas, the Thunder obviously studied the gains and losses of these champion teams before, hoping to find a path to defend the title with enough advantages in the era of chaotic rules. From some perspectives, this offseason may have already decided the title of next June.