17 wins and 1 loss is considered invincible. What are the chances of the Thunder defending their title?

After easily defeating the Trail Blazers at home, the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder have won their 8th home victory of the season. They are invincible in Oklahoma City. Of course, the Thunder also have few opponents on the road - except for a two-point loss in the City of Tear, they have also won the other 9 games. What's interesting is that although the record of 17 wins and 1 loss has led the other teams in the Western Conference by a cliff, it still cannot accurately reflect the dominance of the defending champion. In these 18 games, the team's head coach Shai Gilgeous-Alexander only played 7 times in the final quarter. In the other 11 games, all due to the huge disparity in strength and the loss of suspense early in the game, SGA clocked out in the third quarter.

So, what is the probability that such a powerful Thunder will successfully defend the title in the new season? The US media "Hoop Central" used a large model to predict this problem. The results showed that the probability of the Thunder defending the title is as high as 35%. We might as well look for answers from past NBA history. After defeating the Trail Blazers by a big score, the Thunder became the tenth team in NBA history to achieve 17 wins and 1 loss in the beginning. Among the 9 teams before this, a total of 4 teams finally won the O'Brien Cup that season. The data is the same as that of "Hoop". Central" predictions roughly matched, and the first four teams were the 1969-70 Knicks, 1970-71 Bucks, 1993-94 Rockets, and 1996-97 Bulls. The most regrettable thing was the 2015-16 Warriors. They finally achieved the best record in history of 73 wins in the regular season, but suffered a 1-3 reversal in the finals.

It is worth mentioning that the now invincible and invincible Thunder are not even complete - Jaylen Williams, the team's second-leading player last season, is still recovering from wrist surgery and has not returned to the game. Last season, the Thunder handed over a record of 13 wins and 0 losses without Jie Wei, and their performance this season is not far behind. It is really terrifying. In fact, the Thunder management may even be secretly happy about Jiewei's absence, because he has missed 18 regular season games and automatically lost the qualification for individual awards (because his attendance rate did not meet the standard), thus locking his maximum salary contract into an ordinary maximum salary, saving almost 48 million yuan. Since other teams don't have enough to play anyway, it's better to increase the team's expenses and reduce expenditures.

What is even more worrying is that although the Thunder have been very prosperous for a while, they are likely to be even stronger in the future. That is because in the transaction of George and Westbrook, the Thunder received a large number of first-rounders, and now it seems that they are really making a lot of money. For example, in 2026, the Thunder will have four first-round picks. They can get two top picks from the three first-round picks: themselves, the Rockets (top-4 protection), and the Clippers (unprotected), as well as the two first-round picks from Philadelphia (top-4 protection) and the Jazz (top-8 protection).

According to the current record, there is a high probability that the Thunder will be sent to the Wizards in the first round. However, the Clippers and the Jazz, which have a record of only 5 wins and 12 losses, and 5 wins and 11 losses, have a high probability of becoming lottery picks. This will help Thunder general manager Presti win not only in the present but also in the future. Ballmer's team is really worried. In order to form the Cacho combination, they were angry and became a beauty. Now that George has left Philadelphia, they have to continue to repay the debts of the year. But for the Thunder, there is nothing more satisfying than "want, want, and want".