NBA finals: like the battle cry of Thunder has helped Okc to become NBA champions – and one of the greatest teams of all time
“Be where your feet are.”
It is a battle cry that Oklahoma City Thunder has adopted to help them stay in the present moment. The leader of Thunder Mark Daigneault’s coach shared him for the first time with his team on February 7, 2023, when they were facing the Los Angeles Lakers, whose Lebron James should have beat the NBA score record during the game. Daigneault did not want his players to get lost in anything but they were competing in the game itself.
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“The idea behind it was that there will be so much ongoing in the Arena during Lebron’s moment that you must be where your feet are,” said Oklahoma City Jalen Williams striker between games 3 and 4 of the NBA finals of 2025. “You have to block and stay present at the moment. From there, we have just courses. There have been so many external factors and a lot of noise that have gone in my last three years … team.
Oh, to what extent they arrived.
For many, that night was their first glance at the national level of the Young Thunder, who had spent the two previous seasons. Those years have produced a base of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander through trade and both Williams and Chet Holmgren in the draft. Holmgren was then injured in Los Angeles, but Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams joined for 55 points in a narrow victory that spoiled James’ celebratory night.
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We thought it was the beginning of something. Nobody could have foreseen that that night was the birth of one of the greatest teams in the history of the NBA, a grass dynasty, but this is precisely what happened. Two years later, the feet of the Thunder brought them to the game 7 of the NBA finals, where on Sunday they beat the Indiana Pacers 103-91, conquering the first championship of the franchise in his Era Okc.
I can almost feel you ask you, Really, is this one of the greatest teams ever? And the answer is yes, absolutely. These Thunders are one of the seven teams in the history of the League to win 68 games during the regular season and the first since the Golden State Warriors won 73 NBA record games in the 2015-16 season.
Only these thunder won the title.
Oklahoma City also has the second best clear evaluation (+12.8) in the history of the League, dragging only the Chicago Bulls in 72 victories of Michael Jordan since 1995-96. Bulls are widely considered one of the greatest teams in the history of the NBA, together with the Warriors 2016-17, 1985-86 Boston Celtics, 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers and others.
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The point is: thunder belongs to each other now. How did they arrive here? Being where their feet are.
The thunder are where their feet are … like champions of the NBA. (Photo of Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
“I think he is attacking every day, attacking every representative, attacking every possession and trying to make a habit and understanding the aggravating nature of this and the impact of this when you do it,” Daignea last, a 40 -year -old in his first head of the NBA. “These are guys who have seen success to adopt this approach. When you do something, then you find success by doing it, strengthens it, it raises the commitment. The boys have done an excellent job in the construction of that muscle for a long period of time.”
“It’s almost like a default,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, who turned into an MVP in the process.
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The success of the Thunder followed a linear progression a team of 24 wins in 2021-22 to a team of player at 40 wins a year later, the same season in which they spoiled James’s great night, at a seed n. 1 of 57 wins in 2023-24 and finally to Juggernaut at 68 wins this season. Their internal development cannot be denied.
“When Starting the days, it stacks the goods, stacked the games, this will bring you as much as possible at that moment,” said Daigneault. “Obviously we are more than now of how much we were then. We have maximized what we were capable of in those moments. I think it is the value of that type of approach.”
He should give hope to every team out there. Three seasons are enough to lean on a growth mentality to transform from one of the worst teams of the NBA, a team that was not even trying to win a champion.
Of course, it is easier to say than to do. The Thunder identified Gilgeous-Alexander, which marked on average 10.8 points per game as a debuting on the Los Angeles Clippers, as a future star, nor could they have imagined that he would reach this level. They enlisted Williams and Holmgren, a pair of all-star caliber accessories on the same night of 2022. It boasts one of the most intelligent general directors of all basketball, Sam Presti, who accumulated the drafts of drafts and hit most of the time, building one of the deepest rosters of the League. And they targeted two of the best players of the game, Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartentein, this past out of season, hoping that the final pieces were for a championship puzzle.
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And everything worked. This is not always the way development takes place. You can have a motto – “Be where your feet are” – but you need everyone to buy it. You need everyone to adopt it. You need everyone to live, and it’s not always easy. Players attribute their coach. The coach attributes to his players.
Regardless of this, everyone needed to remember their mantra before the game 7, since none of them, but Caruso had been in this place, hours of an NBA championship. So Daigneault delivered the message again. All the work they had done, the hours they put, the moments they seized, prepared them for this.
“I think it’s the agreement,” Daigneault said. “You want to be prepared. Certainly you want to learn the lessons, putting the game plan at stake, but not at the expense of aggression, trust, instincts. This has been our strength this season. We must certainly lean on this. We must understand that the work is done and we must trust the work. The muscle is built. We have to flex that muscle.”
So, when the pressure reached the peak, when they needed more to be present, when the score was blocked, 56-56, in the middle of the third quarter of the game 7, they flexed. They invited any stacky possession, every representative who attacked. At that moment, SGA, Holmgren and Williams have connected to 3 consecutive episodes, transforming a game linked into a comfortable advantage. From there, the team entrusted its defense – the muscle he had worked so hard to build over time – to take him to the championship.
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“You have to have those themes,” Daigneault said about his team. “This team responds well to those things. If you put the right thing in front of them, they really take us. I think it is the right way to get closer to the competition. But these guys give it to the way they play. You can talk about everything you want, but it is how you perform. These guys perform as competitive monsters.”
When the moment foreseen it, they were present as themselves, Callus as champions.
“Winning is what is remembered,” added Holmgren. “It is what is immortal. I am so happy that we managed to do it. There has been so hard work that many people do not see that they went to this. Years of hard work for all those who led to this. It makes everything useful. It is just a good feeling.”
Be where your feet are. On the NBA mountain.