{"id":224898,"date":"2025-10-19T10:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T10:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224898\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T10:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T10:21:08","slug":"nba-bosses-overwhelmingly-back-oklahoma-city-thunder-to-repeat-as-league-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224898\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA bosses overwhelmingly back Oklahoma City Thunder to repeat as league champions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Superstar players on new teams and All-Stars sidelined by severe injuries have jumbled expectations, but Oklahoma City remain favourites to win it all when the NBA\u2019s 80th season begins on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Thunder will raise a championship banner when Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets visit while the Los Angeles Lakers entertain the Golden State Warriors in the other opening-night clash.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said the \u201cnew goal\u201d was to repeat as winners not doing so \u201cwould suck\u201d.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The 27-year-old Canadian guard was last season\u2019s NBA MVP, NBA Finals MVP and league scoring leader with 32.7 points a game. The three-time NBA All-Star added 6.4 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 1.7 steals and 1.0 blocked shot a game.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">A survey of NBA team general managers had 80 per cent predicting Oklahoma City would repeat as NBA champions, with Cleveland and Denver sharing a distant second on 7 per cent.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets are also considered championship contenders. Photo: Getty Images\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/23b5dafa-dc60-4b38-80e2-fca241626ad2_95537412.jpg\" title=\"Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets are also considered championship contenders. Photo: Getty Images\"\/>Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets are also considered championship contenders. Photo: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The executives\u2019 survey had Denver and Houston as the best of the rest in the Western Conference, with Cleveland and New York top in the East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Superstar players on new teams and All-Stars sidelined by severe injuries have jumbled expectations, but Oklahoma City remain&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[23895,4131,64,63,483,1170,6115,7222,12839,3897,19706,39603,19703,5552,7220,7216,7232,590,85],"class_list":["post-224898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-alperen-sengun","tag-atlanta","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boston","tag-bradley-beal","tag-cleveland","tag-damian-lillard","tag-deandre-ayton","tag-denver","tag-dorian-finney-smith","tag-evan-mobley","tag-fred-vanvleet","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-houston-rockets","tag-kevin-durant","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}