The 2024-25 NBA season is officially in the books.

The Oklahoma City Thunder were able to outlast the Indiana Pacers in seven games to capture the franchise’s first championship since moving from Seattle.

In the aftermath of Oklahoma City’s all-time great title run, let’s take a look at some of the things that we learned from the 2025 NBA Finals.

The Thunder have arrived and will be good for a long time

Not only did Oklahoma City win the NBA Championship, but they did it in historic fashion. Their regular season record was 68-14, while they finished the playoffs with a record of 16-7, meaning they went 84-21 during the 2024-25 campaign. That ties the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls for the third most combined wins in a single NBA season. Clearly, OKC was the best team in the league this year.

What’s even crazier is that the Thunder have not hit their prime yet. This is the youngest team in the National Basketball Association, with an average age of 24.148. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 26. Jalen Williams is 24. Chet Holmgren is 23. The three most important players on Oklahoma City’s roster haven’t even begun to hit their peak as professional basketball players. Yet, they were still able to win a championship. As time goes on, this team will just continue to get better. I have a feeling that this group will be even more effective in three years, when Holmgren and Williams start to hit their physical prime.

We also can’t forget that the Thunder have an insane amount of draft capital that they can use to trade for another superstar. If they don’t want to do that, then they continue to acquire young talent and solidify this roster to make a dynastic run over the next few years. They have seven first-round picks in the next three NBA Drafts. I am confident that they will hit on at least one of those picks and find another contributor like they did with Williams in 2022.

The Eastern Conference is wide open

Injuries have left a lot of questions about who should be the favorite to win the Eastern Conference in 2026. Smart money would have been on the Indiana Pacers, but Tyrese Haliburton’s entire 2025-26 season is “in jeopardy,” as Shams Charania puts it. Considering he’s the heart and soul of that team, I could see them taking a step back next year. The Cleveland Cavaliers just had a wildly disappointing postseason run and haven’t been able to get past the second round of the playoffs with their core of players. The Boston Celtics will likely be without Jayson Tatum for the entire season, so I think they’ll take a step back. The same can be said for the Milwaukee Bucks, who will probably have to go the entirety of next season without Damian Lillard. And while the New York Knicks are healthy, they have no head coach as things currently stand.

There are glaring issues for the top five teams in the Eastern Conference from this past season. With no clear favorite, almost anybody could emerge and win the East. It could even be a team like the Pistons, Magic, or 76ers. It’ll come down to which franchise can stay the healthiest through the regular season and deep into the playoffs.

Sam Presti is a Hall of Famer

Thunder general manager Sam Presti just cemented his spot in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame with this championship. Though he had won three titles as an assistant general manager, he had never won a Championship as the primary GM of a team until yesterday. With that victory, we need to start talking about him as one of the best general managers of this era.

Presti had already had an absolutely phenomenal career as a GM even before the Thunder won a championship. In his first few years as a general manager for OKC, he built a championship contender by drafting Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Serge Ibaka. Though that group never won a title in Oklahoma City, they put the Thunder on the map.

Years later, after acquiring Paul George, Presti traded him to the Clippers for a future MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He also landed five first-round picks, one of which was used to draft Jalen Williams. And if that wasn’t enough, Presti has stockpiled 15 picks in the next four NBA Drafts, so the Thunder will likely find more talented players to join their already stacked roster over the next few years.

Since Sam Presti was named the GM of the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder in June of 2007, he has masterfully navigated an ever-changing NBA landscape while ensuring his franchise rarely had to go through any sort of rebuild. As a result, he will one day be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Rick Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the league

Lost in the aftermath of the Thunder winning the championship and Tyrese Haliburton tearing his Achilles is Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle, who did an outstanding job of making sure his team was prepared and winning against all odds throughout the NBA Playoffs.

Before coming to Indiana, Rick Carlisle had already won a championship. It just so happens to be one of the most impressive title runs in NBA history, when he led the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA Finals win in 2011. During those playoffs, Carlisle led an aging Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki to wins over Kobe Bryant’s Lakers, Kevin Durant’s Thunder, and LeBron James’ Miami Heat superteam.

Though he would remain with the Mavs for ten more years, he stepped down as the team’s head coach and went to Indiana, where he started to build a new contender. After a disappointing 2022 and 2023, Carlisle finally got his team into the playoffs in back-to-back years, where they advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals and then the NBA Finals despite not having the same level of All-Star talent as their opponents.

Obviously, the Game Seven loss and Tyrese Haliburton’s injuries are crushing blows to Indiana. But the silver lining is that Rick Carlisle is finally being recognized as one of the great coaches in the NBA alongside guys like Steve Kerr and Erik Spoelstra. Should he win a championship in Indiana, I believe he will overtake those guys and be recognized as the best coach in the league.

The Regular Season needs to be shortened

Postseason injuries are now becoming a major concern for the NBA. In fact, it’s getting to the point where injuries are being talked about more than the actual games.

During the 2025 Playoffs, three high-profile All-Stars tore their Achilles: Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton, and Damian Lillard. Before that, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson suffered career-altering injuries in 2019. Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jalen Brunson, and Jimmy Butler are some of the other All-Stars who have missed at least one NBA Playoff game over the last two seasons.

There are many reasons why injuries occur in sports. But oftentimes, doctors will say that the wear and tear players deal with across an 82-game season is one of the biggest causes of those injuries. Recently, these injuries have become more prevalent, and the tipping point came last night when Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles during Game Seven of the NBA Finals. That was his 96th game of the playoffs and regular season, and his 179th start over the last two years. Even the most athletic people in the world are not meant to put that much strain on their bodies during.

I believe that these injuries would be less prevalent if the NBA decided to shorten the regular season. I am not suggesting anything crazy like a 17-game regular season similar to the NFL. I think the league should reduce the number of regular-season games a team plays to 68 and push the start of the season back to Christmas. Nobody is really watching the NBA in October and November anyway, so why not ensure your players are healthier in April, May, and June when the league has to compete with the NHL rather than the NFL, which always beats the NBA in terms of viewership?

The NBA should have shortened the regular season years ago, but there wasn’t a good reason to. With All-Stars missing so many games in recent years and the devastating Achilles injury that Tyrese Haliburton suffered in what could’ve been one of the greatest basketball games of all time, now is when the league should consider changing things up in terms of scheduling.