Jan 29, 2025; San Francisco, California, USA; Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and guard Stephen Curry (30) are recognized as the USA Basketball head coach and male athlete of the year before the start of the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn ImagesClemente Almanza, OKC Thunder WireWed, December 3, 2025 at 7:01 PM UTC·3 min readOut of the entire NBA's history, only one person can say they've been part of two 70-win regular seasons — Steve Kerr. That's a fun trivia question that'll get the wheels rolling inside most folks' minds. So if anybody knows what it takes to reach that mark, it's him.
The NBA has had two 70-plus win seasons in its entire existence. The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls did that with a 72-10 record. They went on to win the NBA championship. Kerr was a role player on that team. That was the regular-season record for most wins for about 20 years.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNow the head coach, Kerr helped break that record. The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors went an all-time 73-9. They finished a win shy of an NBA championship as LeBron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to an infamous 3-1 series comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals.
The two-team club could make room for one more. A decade since the Warriors' epic collapse, the 2025-26 Oklahoma City Thunder has many pundits forecasting a 70-win season. Not that shocking an opinion. They went a historic 68-14 last season with the best point differential ever. They eventually brought home the Larry O'Brien trophy.
Still a long way to go, but the Thunder are off to a hot start. They have a 21-1 record. More importantly, they sit at an eye-popping 15.1 net rating. That would be the NBA's record. For comparison, they had a 12.7 net rating last season. Oh, and by the way, Jalen Williams has only played in three games as he missed the first month with wrist surgery recovery.
Before the Thunder avoided a 22-point collapse in a 124-112 win over the Warriors, Kerr talked about what goes into a 70-win season. From what he answered with, it sounds like the Thunder have the DNA to reach that mark — and they don't necessarily have to even try for it, unlike Golden State did last decade.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"Overall, a team mindset of zero agendas. Just win every night. Obviously, great talent. But I think high-IQ players. The two teams you're referring to that I was part of, both had really, really high IQ’s individually and as a team," Kerr said. "That’s what I see with OKC, really, really smart players, great coach, really connected. They're on pace to shatter the record, it’s pretty remarkable what they're doing."
That's quite the compliment from one of the NBA's winningest personalities. While the Warriors' best years are behind them, Kerr has the institutional knowledge to know what it takes to reach all-time greatness. He experienced it firsthand by being Michael Jordan's teammate and Stephen Curry's coach.
Let's see if the Thunder can have a similar type of dominance in the 2020s that those two teams had in the 1990s and 2010s. So far, everything has gone right for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his teammates. They look like a team primed to go back-to-back.
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Steve Kerr breaks down what OKC Thunder must do to get to 70 wins
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