Opening night of the 2025/26 NBA season in Oklahoma City picked up where last term left off with an absolute thriller. On a stage built for drama, the Thunder—NBA champions reborn and playing with the promise of a dynasty in the making running through their veins—welcomed Kevin Durant’s Houston Rockets for a teasing opener between two Western Conference heavyweights. The Space City side headed to the home of the champions on the hunt for an upset victory, and they very nearly got the job done.
With KD shining throughout the opening three quarters, the Rockets held a five-point lead heading into the fourth. Then, however, the brilliance of reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander came to the fore. The Canadian superstar erupted with a 12-point blitz to level things up, before a late Durant missed free throw saw the contest head into not one but two overtime periods. SGA would ultimately prove to be the difference, hitting a step-back jumper for the win deep into the second additional period, rubber-stamping exactly why basketball betting sites list the Thunder as the favorites to repeat in 2026.
One can bet on basketball at Bovada, and the American betting giant currently makes OKC the short-priced +210 favorite to successfully defend their crown this season. However, as these tales will tell you, going back to back is by no means an easy feat, and those looking to bet on the upcoming tournament should do so with this in mind. It has been eight long years since the Splash Brothers inspired the Golden Warriors to successfully defend their title in 2018, their third crown in four seasons. But how have other champions fared in their title defenses? Let's take a look.
Boston Celtics
The Celtics entered 2024-25 with the kind of swagger only an 18th banner can bring—a franchise steeped in laurels, yet freshly driven by a new generation’s ambition. They blazed through winter with surgical precision: 61 wins, first in the Atlantic, second in the East, and the NBA’s highest three-point tally on opening night against the Knicks. Jayson Tatum played with the control of a master craftsman with a whopping average of almost 27 points a night, while Jaylen Brown filled the stat sheet as ever. As the postseason approached, the engine was purring and the champions were the favorites for glory once again.
But for all their regular-season brilliance, Beantown was quietly fragile beneath the paint. Kristaps Porziņģis’s health teetered all year, shaving precious margin for error from a thin frontcourt. Their playoff run began as expected—Orlando dispatched in five, the TD Garden rocking. Then fate intervened.
Tatum went down with an Achilles tear only eight games into the postseason, taking his side's championship ambitions to the treatment room with him. Suddenly, talk of a title repeat vanished, replaced by the cold calculus of roster depth. The Celtics fell 2-4 to the Knicks, their title defense cut short not by tactics, but by the brutal fickleness of an ill-timed injury to their star man. If there is a lesson here for OKC, it’s that even the most robust title defenses can pivot on a single, brutal twist of fate.
Denver Nuggets
Hand Nikola Jokić an MVP trophy and he’ll make you believe there’s nothing he can’t do—but 2023-24 proved just how fragile dynasties can be. Denver’s 57-win campaign looked, on paper, to be the start of a long reign. Their offense remained among the league’s most efficient, and Jamal Murray’s return helped patch over absences. Yet, the loss of Bruce Brown and a wounded rotation fostered cracks just beneath the surface.
The playoffs told Denver’s entire story in one soul-shaking act. After tossing aside the Lakers (again) in the first round, the Nuggets found themselves up by 20 at halftime of Game 7 against Minnesota. The ball zipped, the stars shone, the Western Conference Finals beckoned. Then the bottom dropped out.
Minnesota erased the deficit, Denver’s halfcourt offense wilted, and the champions watched on in horror as their season died on their own floor—a 98-90 defeat that stands as much psychological landmark as statistical outlier. One cannot overstate the mental toll of a title defense gone sideways; it’s a drama OKC’s own young core must reckon with.
Golden State Warriors
Some collapses are built in slow motion. Golden State arrived for the 2022-23 campaign with four banners in the last eight years, plenty of pedigree, and enough shooting to flatten any defense, but the Draymond Green–Jordan Poole preseason incident was a harbinger not just of tension, but of something fracturing at the dynasty’s core. Home fans continued to be dazzled—33-8 at Chase Center, Steph Curry raining threes in historic flurries. Yet they were dreadful on the road, where cohesion evaporated and communication fell short.
Playoff trackers showed the Warriors up and fighting, never more so than in Game 7 vs. Sacramento, when Curry’s 50 points lit the night and secured progression. But the Lakers were waiting in the conference semifinals, and Golden State buckled under the cumulative weight of their own off-court problems and a battered supporting cast. The 2-4 series defeat was the earliest playoff flameout of the Kerr era, a warning for teams that greatness depends as much on harmony as it does on talent. OKC, widely respected for culture and chemistry, would do well to heed that warning.
