The Thunder are NBA champions, and they might be just getting started

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The promise came three years ago from Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti. It might have been overlooked for a couple of reasons. One, the Thunder were awful at the time. Two, he was speaking Latin.

“Labor omnia vincit,” Presti said after the 2021-22 season, quoting a motto of Oklahoma. Depending on how Presti was translating it, it could have been “hard work conquers all” or “slow work conquers all.”

Either way, it applies to the Thunder. They did hard work. They did slow work.

They conquered all.

The Thunder — three years removed from winning 24 games — won 84 games this season and are NBA champions after beating the Indiana Pacers in a seven-game NBA Finals slugfest. For the rest of the NBA, this should be a scary development. They have the MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He and all of Oklahoma City’s key players are under contract for next season, there’s a 2024 lottery pick in Nikola Topic who didn’t even play this season because of a torn ACL and the Thunder currently have two picks in the top 24 in this year’s draft as well.

They are young; their starters, right now, are 27, 26, 26, 24 and 23. They are bold. And they might — should — be contending for a while.

“We definitely still have room to grow,” said Gilgeous-Alexander, the MVP, the NBA Finals MVP, the league’s scoring champion and now, an NBA champion as well. “That’s the fun part of this. So many of us can still get better. There’s not very many of us on the team that are in our prime or even close to it. We have a lot to grow, individually and as a group. I’m excited for the future of this team. This is a great start, for sure.”

And the timing of them hitting this sort of stride is pretty good, too.

Plenty of teams have questions going into next season. Oklahoma City isn’t one of them. Jayson Tatum in Boston, Damian Lillard in Milwaukee and now Tyrese Haliburton in Indiana all have Achilles injuries and figure to miss most if not all of next season. The Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James will be going into his 23rd season. Golden State’s Stephen Curry is turning 38 next season. Kevin Durant, now of Houston (in a trade that’s going to be official in the coming weeks), is going into his 18th season. Philadelphia’s hopes hinge on Joel Embiid coming back healthy. New York will be dealing with a coaching change.

Oklahoma City seems to have everything right in place.

“They have a lot of great players on this team,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.

Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren all seem to enjoy playing with and off one another, none of them caring who gets credit. Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein fit seamlessly into the roles the Thunder asked them to play. Luguentz Dort is a defensive machine and has come to realize that most people don’t have the ability to appreciate how good he is at that end.

It’s not just the players who don’t care about puffing out their own chests. Same goes for the leadership.

“You’re not guaranteed anything in the league,” Caruso said. “I think that’s the biggest thing that happens year to year that people forget about. Any moment your team can change with a trade, with an injury, with something that’s out of your control. To be able to get to the pinnacle of this sport and win it is nothing short of extraordinary. To think that you can just walk in and do it every single year is a little bit naïve. Rest assured, we’ll show up Day 1 next year ready to get better and ready to chase this again.”

Presti, the architect of it all, rarely speaks publicly. Same goes for Clay Bennett, the owner. And coach Mark Daigneault is the calm in the eye of any storm, the perfect driver of the Thunder bus.

“There’s no guarantee you end it the way that we did,” Daigneault said. “I just wanted it so bad for them. I was just so thrilled that we were able to get that done and they get to experience this because they deserve it. The way they approach it, the professionalism, competitiveness, team-first nature, like I said, I wanted it so bad for them.”

The journey isn’t over for the Thunder. It’s just starting. Presti has a war chest filled with draft picks and the team has some financial flexibility to add a piece if it so chooses. And now there’s a title to defend.

Labor omnia vincit. There’s more work to do.

“We have a lot of hard work in front of us,” Presti said that day in 2022. “We have to grind in and do it. That’s what the state is about. That’s what the history of the community is about. That’s what the basketball team here is about.”

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Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams celebrates after they won the NBA basketball championship with a Game 7 victory against the Indiana Pacers Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, left, shoots against Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard during the second half of Game 7 of the NBA Finals basketball series Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Luguentz Dort, left, celebrates with teammates in the locker room after winning the NBA basketball championship with a Game 7 victory against the Indiana Pacers Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Oklahoma City Thunder players put hats on the head of head coach Mark Daigneault, center, as they celebrate winning the NBA basketball championship with a Game 7 victory against the Indiana Pacers Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, center, holds up the MVP trophy as he celebrates with his team after they won the NBA basketball championship with a Game 7 victory against the Indiana Pacers Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. wholesale inflation cooled last month, despite worries that President Donald Trump’s tariffs would push prices higher for goods before they reach consumers.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that its producer price index was unchanged last month from May after rising 0.3% the previous month. June wholesale prices rose 2.3% from a year earlier, the smallest year-over-year gain since September. Both measures came in below what economists had expected.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so called core producer prices were also unchanged from May and up 2.6% from June 2024.

The report on wholesale inflation arrived a day after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices last month rose 2.7% from June 2024, the biggest year-over-year gain since February, as Trump’s sweeping tariffs pushed up the cost of everything from groceries to appliances.

Consumer prices and producers prices do not always move in tandem, however.

Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, saw some signs of the impact of Trump’s tariffs in a 0.3% increase in core wholesale goods prices. Furniture prices rose 1% from May and home electronics 0.8%, he noted. Both of those types of goods are heavily imported.

But producer prices at steel mills fell 5.5% despite Trump’s hefty 50% tax on imported steel.

Some companies bought products before Trump rolled out his tariffs and have relied on those inventories to keep a lid on prices. But Saunders warned that those inventories are running low and that Trump plans to impose stiff tariffs (such as 25% levies on Japanese and South Korean imports) starting Aug. 1.

“We are not out of the woods yet,’’ Saunders wrote in a commentary.

The producer price report showed that auto retailers' profit margins dropped 5.4%, suggesting that car dealers were eating the cost of Trump's 25% tariff on some imported cars and auto parts. That might explain why new vehicle prices fell last month in the consumer price report Tuesday.

“We doubt that auto retailers will continue to absorb the tariffs indefinitely,'' wrote Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, ”but they have room to fall a good deal further after they surged during the spike in sales as people sought to get ahead of tariffs on imported vehicles.''

Wholesale prices can offer an early look at where consumer inflation might be headed. Economists also monitor the report closely because some of its components, notably measures of health care and financial services, flow into the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index.

Inflation began to flare up for the first time in decades in 2021, as the economy roared back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns. That prompted the Fed to raise its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. The higher borrowing costs helped bring inflation down from the peaks it reached in 2022, and last year the Fed felt comfortable enough with the progress to cut rates three times.

But it has turned cautious this year while it waits to see the inflationary impact of Trump’s trade policies. Trump has aggressively stepped up pressure on the Fed to cut rates, which has been seen as a threat to the central bank’s independence.

File - A truck loaded with new cars arrives arrives at the Stellantis Belvidere Assembly Plant on Monday, July 10, 2023, in Belvidere. Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

FILE- In this Jan. 28, 2019, file photo a container ship is unloaded at the Port of Oakland in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)