This is supposed to be the NBA’s parity era, but Oklahoma City has other plans.

The Thunder are going to be favored over the Pacers in the NBA Finals, which start Thursday in Oklahoma City. Regardless of which team lifts the Larry O’Brien trophy, this year will mark the seventh consecutive season the NBA has had a different champion. Prior to the Raptors 2019 title, which started the streak, the Warriors and Cavaliers met in four straight NBA Finals. Since 2019, the Warriors and Celtics are the only teams to make the Finals multiple times.

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A new collective bargaining agreement was supposed to make dynasty building harder, but Oklahoma City is primed to push back.

It started back in 2019, when general manager Sam Presti made the best move of his career. The Thunder sent Paul George to the Clippers for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had just finished a solid-but-not-spectacular rookie season. The Thunder also received five first-round picks and a couple of pick swaps in the deal.

Oklahoma City used one of those picks on Jalen Williams, who has quickly developed into Gilgeous-Alexander’s co-star. Hitting on Chet Holmgren and Cason Wallace with top-10 picks in recent years helped, as did trading for Alex Caruso and signing Isaiah Hartenstein last summer.

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Heading into the Finals, the Thunder will have the Most Valuable Player, the better coach in Mark Daigneault and more depth and versatility than their opponent. The Thunder should be celebrating their first championship since relocating from Seattle in a couple of weeks, but they shouldn’t be satisfied with just one, given their situation.

Gilgeous-Alexander is under contract for $38.3 million next season, the same cap hit that Michael Porter Jr. has for the Nuggets, while Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray will make significantly more. Hartenstein ($28.5 million) and Luguentz Dort ($17.7 million) are set to be the Thunder’s second and third most-expensive players next season, while Williams, Holmgren and Wallace are still on their rookie contracts.

The salary situation will get a little more complicated when contract extensions hit, but Oklahoma City still has a hoard of future draft picks to supplement the roster or facilitate a trade for another star. That includes two first-round picks this year and three more next year.

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That’s bad news for Nuggets fans who bought into the dynasty talk after Denver won its first championship in 2023 and grew tired of Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder over the course of seven games of the second-round series.

No team is better positioned than the Thunder to bring the parity era to an end.