For 17 days last June, all that separated Oklahoma City and Indiana over seven games of the NBA Finals was 19 points and a ruptured Achilles tendon.<\/p>\n
Five months later, as the title celebration rolls on for the Thunder and the Pacers endure the painful aftereffects of star guard Tyrese Haliburton\u2019s devastating injury, those same teams have begun strikingly divergent seasons \u2014 separated by the largest gap in the entire NBA, by record. <\/p>\n
Even without all-NBA wing Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City\u2019s second-best player who is recovering from offseason surgery to repair a wrist and has yet to make his season debut, the Thunder have started 14-1. Since 2000, only six other teams had a record as good or better through a season\u2019s first 15 games. <\/p>\n
What might be scariest about Oklahoma City is its apparent lack of complacency coming off last season\u2019s championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly speaking, I didn\u2019t like the way we won, if that makes sense,\u201d Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder guard who earned most valuable player honors during the regular season and Finals, told The Athletic this month<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t think we won an NBA championship playing our best basketball. That was the first time we\u2019d been that far in the playoffs, so it was a learning experience for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Oklahoma City isn\u2019t just winning, but dominating \u2014 outscoring opponents by an average of 15.5 points per game, the NBA\u2019s widest margin by a significant degree. Their opportunity to repeat as champions appears enormous. <\/p>\n Indiana\u2019s 1-13 start, meanwhile, is a reminder of how quickly the window for championship contention can shut. And the Pacers aren\u2019t just getting beat, but blown out by an average of 14.5 points<\/a>, the league\u2019s second-largest deficit.<\/p>\n It stood as the NBA\u2019s worst winning percentage through Monday, with little optimism of a turnaround in the near future, because although Indiana immediately grasped in June that Haliburton\u2019s injury recovery could last the entire 2025-26 season, and plummet the team toward the fringes of playoff contention, the bottom has fallen out in ways few could have predicted immediately after Game 7. <\/p>\n Myles Turner, a center integral to last season\u2019s playoff run, signed with a division rival, Milwaukee, in free agency over the summer. Then key role players counted on to keep Indiana afloat as Haliburton recovered began getting hurt themselves. A hamstring sidelined point guard T.J. McConnell the first 10 games. Sixteen minutes into the Oct. 23 season opener, guard Andrew Nembhard injured a shoulder that kept him out the next seven games. In their second game, Bennedict Mathurin, a quick-scoring option, hurt a toe. In their third, forward Obi Toppin injured a foot that could keep him out for three months. <\/p>\n