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By Alex Kirschenbaum
Contributing Entertainment Writer
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The reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder will be without a critical rotation piece heading into the start of their 2025-26 title defense.
After bringing in seasoned vets Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein to shore up their core of All-NBA point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, All-Star forward Jalen Williams, big man Chet Holmgren, All-Defensive guard Luguentz Dort, and wing Aaron Wiggins, the Thunder ratcheted up their best-in-the-West 57-25 record in 2023-24 to a league-most 68-14 in 2024-25.
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Gilgeous-Alexander earned his first MVP award, Williams became an All-Star and Dort emerged as a Defensive Player of the Year contender.
Oh, and the Thunder won their first NBA championship since they were the Seattle SuperSonics in 1979.
Now, Oklahoma City finds itself as perhaps the best-positioned team to repeat in years. In a league of surprising parity, no team has achieved that feat since the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors, a loaded squad that featured four future first-ballot Hall of Famers — Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — in their absolute primes.
A Thunder Club on the Rise
Beyond the 27-year-old Gilgeous-Alexander and Hartenstein, the 31-year-old Caruso, and the 26-year-old Dort, a lot of the Thunder's core pieces aren't even in their primes yet.
Now, one of Oklahoma City's youngest backcourt assets has suffered a troubling new injury ahead of making his league debut.
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Per Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, point guard Nikola Topic has undergone a "testicular procedure" (based on this language, it seems like to have been a surgery) and will miss the next four-to-six weeks of action, at which point he will be reassessed. That does not necessarily mean he will even be available to play at that point.
Topic's NBA debut will now be delayed a bit, as we're just two weeks out from the start of the 2025-26 regular season.
The 6-foot-6 guard, 20, was selected with the No. 12 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, at the bottom end of the lottery. He had torn his ACL in May 2024, prior to the draft, while playing for Serbian pro club Crvena Zvezda, and missed the entire 2024-25 season to recover. He still earned a title while recovering, which isn't bad work if you can get it.
Topic had been poised to at least fight for rotation minutes behind Gilgeous-Alexander off Oklahoma City's bench.
Although Oklahoma City has boasted some of the best draft equity across the league in recent years (even while competing for championships), the team has been somewhat snake-bitten when it comes to integrating its first-round picks. 19-year-old former Georgetown center Thomas Sorber, the No. 15 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, tore his right knee ACL last month, and has already been ruled out for what would have been his rookie season in 2025-26.
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