**FRESH OFF BECOMING** the second-youngest championship team in NBA history, the Oklahoma City Thunder gathered around a table stocked with celebratory beverages and turned their attention to sage veteran Alex Caruso.
Caruso’s voice had carried a lot of weight in the Thunder’s locker room since he arrived via a trade the previous summer. At 31, he was the oldest player on Oklahoma City’s roster and the only one who owned an NBA championship ring, which he had flashed around the practice facility early in the season as a motivational tactic.
Caruso was also the only player in the room who had a clue about how to pop a champagne bottle.
In fact, for Jalen Williams and Jaylin Williams, this would be the first time they had ever taken so much as a sip of alcohol. Their inexperience, as well as that of some of the Thunder’s other youngsters, soon became apparent.
After taking a head count, Caruso showed his teammates how to remove the foil from the bottle, undo the metal and get the cork ready -- and then a few corks popped prematurely. There were a couple more false starts on the second attempt before the Thunder managed to pop the corks in sync on their third try, setting off a hilariously tame title celebration.
“It was a good first try,” Caruso said on the podium that night, removing his championship cap and rubbing his bald head while smiling wryly. “We’ll get some rest, reset, try to go again next year and see if we can do it again.
“We’ll be better. We’ll be better next year.”
That kind of progress probably wasn’t quite what Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti had in mind a few months later, when he held his annual preseason meeting with the local media in the interview room down the Paycom Center hallway, but the organization maintaining an “obsession with improvement” was the overarching theme of the session.
How much improvement can be expected after a franchise-record 68-win season and title run? Plenty, according to the face of the franchise and other core players, pointing out that the pair of playoff series in which the Thunder were pushed to seven games provide plenty of opportunity to nitpick.
“I don’t think as a group we played our best basketball in that playoff run,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told ESPN. “And I don’t think as a player, I played my best basketball for the whole run. Granted, it’s basketball, it’s going to happen -- but I had droughts, and there’s a reason why I had droughts. We had droughts as a team, and there’s a reason why we had droughts and meltdowns and things like that.
“We have to learn from those experiences and be better.”
There certainly haven’t been any signs of a championship hangover, as the Thunder opened the season by winning their first eight games, the best start in the franchise’s 18-year Oklahoma City tenure. The Thunder have a league-best 11-1 record entering Wednesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers despite All-NBA wing Jalen Williams having yet to return from summer wrist surgery, among other injuries to key players.
A relentless growth mentality fueled the Thunder’s rapid ascent from a rebuilding franchise to reigning champions. They are determined not to deviate from that mindset despite what coach Mark Daigneault refers to as the “distraction” of being champions and the “challenges” that come with success.
“Whatever we want, we’ve had to make happen,” Presti said as he was wrapping up his 12-minute opening statement in his late September media availability. “In this case, making it happen means having the discipline and humility to turn the page and push ourselves forward.
“This approach fits us best because in Oklahoma, we are builders. We are not guardians. We’re not guarding or defending the past. That’s over, and it’s ours.
“We are pursuing our future and whatever comes next.”
The Thunder want to be greedy as they continue growing.
“The way I see -- obviously it’s a different scale -- but it’s easy to do one thing one time,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Steph Curry’s not the greatest shooter because he made one shot. He made shots over and over and over again.
“I don’t want to win just one. I don’t want to be known as a winner. So it takes multiple times.”