While the 2025 Oklahoma City Thunder’s resume will stack up with some of the greatest of all time should they win the NBA Finals, the casual fan may still believe this team is league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander playing the star while his teammates assume lesser roles in the production.
If Monday’s resounding Game 3 victory in Minnesota proved anything, it’s the crew in Oklahoma City is much more of an ensemble cast than it is a Gilgeous-Alexander carry job. If the emergence of Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren continues at the trajectory Game 3 exemplified, the NBA’s newfound era of parity might be far more short-lived than many would hope.
Supporting Cast Emerges
While Gilgeous-Alexander of course led the way with his first 40-point playoff outing, Williams was right behind his teammate with 34 points and a 6-of-9 shooting clip from 3-point range. Holmgren served as a dominant defensive presence with a team-high four blocks to go with 21 points on 9-of-14 shooting and seven rebounds.
The dirty secret behind SGA’s 40-ball on Monday was his 13-of-30 performance from the field overall and his 2-of-9 clip from 3-point range. Williams went 13-of-24 from the field overall, meaning the third-year guard out of Santa Clara had the same amount of made field goals as the current MVP of the league on six less shots. That point must be emphasized not to criticize SGA, but to contextualize just what Thunder GM Sam Presti has built in Oklahoma City.
“The thing I’m most impressed with about (Williams) is his ability to learn from his experiences very quickly,” Thunder coach Mark Daigenault said. “He had some games in the Denver series where he wasn’t great offensively. He just looks at it in a very intentional way and he improves. Shai did a good job of finding him, but I just think his carryover and his growth from game to game is exciting because he’s still a young player, as great of a player as he is.”
J-Dub this postseason:
20.5 PPG
5.6 RPG
5.3 APG
1.7 SPGTop two in PPG, APG and SPG for the Thunder. pic.twitter.com/nXmHdEwAxb
— StatMuse (@statmuse) May 27, 2025
What Monday also showed is that the NBA will likely have no answer for this growing ensemble cast. The Thunder’s starting lineup took 72 field goal attempts and scored 101 points in total, with 68 of those field goal attempts and 95 of those points coming from the “Big 3” that consists of Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren.
Reinforcements Still To Come
Oh, and I say that it’s a growing ensemble cast because Presti still has what feels like half the league’s draft capital and a Serbian phenom by the name of Nikola Topic waiting in the wings.
How is that possible, you ask? Because the Thunder still had the No. 12 pick in last year’s NBA Draft despite having the best regular season record in the NBA. With that pick, they chose Topic, who at one point was slated to go at the very top of the 2024 NBA Draft before suffering a torn ACL that required him to miss the 2024-25 season. Thus, the rich get richer.
Nikola Topic ranked among Europe's best PNR players at 18, which is scary considering how much PGs typically improve with age and experience. His ability to make instantaneous reads, map out the court, and process the game with surgical precision is a rare and coveted commodity. pic.twitter.com/AXQmmJdeR0
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) June 10, 2024
The Thunder own the Miami Heat’s first-round pick this season, placing them right outside the lottery with the No. 15 overall pick despite the team being on track for an NBA title. Oklahoma City also owns Philadelphia and Utah’s first-round picks in 2026, though the 76ers’ pick is protected if it lands in the 1-4 range, while Utah’s would be protected if it falls within the 1-8 range.
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