The Oklahoma City Thunder is full of young players, and nothing made that clearer than how the team responded to winning the NBA championship on Sunday night.
The Thunder beat the Indiana Pacers 103-91 at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Okla., to win the championship. The only player on their roster who had previous NBA Finals experience was Alex Caruso. He won the championship with the Lakers in 2020, so he knows how to pop a champagne bottle in celebration. Nobody on the Thunder knew how to do that.
Thunder center Isaiah Hartenstein said after Sunday’s win over the Pacers that Caruso had to show his teammates how to pop a champagne bottle.
“First of all, none of us knew how to do it. We were asking [Caruso] how to do it. No one knew how to do it. Shout out to AC for teaching us how to pop champagne, I guess,” Hartenstein said after the game.
Isaiah Hartenstein said nobody knew how to pop a champagne bottle and that Alex Caruso had to teach them lmao pic.twitter.com/pBiExh1aUG
— Clemente Almanza (@CAlmanza1007) June 23, 2025
Not only was Caruso the only Thunder player to have won a championship previously, but at 31 years old, he is the oldest player on their team. Kenrich Williams is 30, and no other player on the team is older than 26.
Caruso scored 10 points in 32 minutes in Game 7. He was the team’s fourth-leading scorer during the postseason, and he played an invaluable role with his champagne assistance after OKC won it all.
