On Wednesday evening, the Oklahoma City Thunder punched their ticket to the final four of the NBA Cup tournament with a 49-point win over the Phoenix Suns in the quarterfinal round. The Thunder's historically dominant net rating took another major uptick with this win, which sends the Thunder to Las Vegas for the second year in a row to compete for the tournament crown.

After games this season, the Thunder have been known to conduct group interviews on the court with sideline reporter Nick Gallo, who recently appeared in an AT&T commercial with superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. On Wednesday, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams made sure to congratulate Gallo on his high-profile appearance.

Overall, it was just another example of the infectious joy and camaraderie with which this Thunder team plays, and has played for quite some time.

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The Thunder now sit at 24-1 on the 2025-26 NBA season, tied for the best start in NBA history with the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, and are well on pace to shatter the NBA records for net rating and wins in a single season.

Of course, Oklahoma City has had a startlingly easy schedule up to this point in the season, not having played some of the better teams in the league and also getting a light slate up to this point in terms of back to backs.

However, the team is still clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the NBA landscape at this point, and figures to only get better as time goes on and younger players like Ajay Mitchell continue to get more reps.

In any case, the Thunder now are set for a matchup this weekend in Las Vegas vs the San Antonio Spurs, in what will be a preview of the Christmas Day game between the two teams a couple of weeks after that.