Parity

The defending NBA champions aren’t thinking of themselves in that way.

The 80th season of the NBA starts Tuesday night in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder — the “defending” champions, even though they don’t seem to like the term — will get their rings and enjoy one final moment of celebrating last season’s seven-game triumph over the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals.

“Everybody is saying ‘defending,’” guard Jalen Williams said, “but we’re trying to be on the offensive as well.”

Translation: One title isn’t enough for the Thunder. They want more.

They are fully aware that this is the NBA’s parity era — seven different franchises have won titles in the last seven years, a run unprecedented in league history. Commissioner Adam Silver has seen nine different franchises win in his 12 seasons leading the NBA; his predecessor, David Stern, saw eight different franchises win in his 30-year run as commissioner. The Thunder would like to be the ones to put at least a temporary halt to parity, and with basically everyone back from a 68-win team that won the crown last season, it’s easy to see why BetMGM Sportsbook lists the Thunder as favorites to win the 2026 title.

“It’s what you strive for,” said Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, coming off a year in which he was the scoring champion, an NBA champion, the MVP and the NBA Finals MVP. “We’ve all achieved something that we’ve dreamed about since we were kids. We’ve had plenty of time to relish and think about it and have fun, and I guess you can kind of say just soak in it. I know I have.

“But … it would suck to lose the NBA championship in 2026. So that’s the new focus. That’s the new goal.”

It won’t be easy, of course. The Western Conference is positively loaded.

Lakers guard Luka Doncic drives past Oklahoma City Thunder guard Cason Wallace during a road loss last season.

(Kyle Phillips / Associated Press)

Houston added Kevin Durant to a 52-win team. Victor Wembanyama is healthy again in San Antonio. Golden State still has Stephen Curry. The Lakers have Luka Doncic and (soon, they hope) LeBron James. Nikola Jokic remains unstoppable in Denver. Anthony Edwards hasn’t even reached his prime yet in Minnesota. The Clippers have the most experienced roster in the league. Dallas has the No. 1 pick in Cooper Flagg and tons of talent around him.

Those eight teams — among others — all have legitimate hopes. Consider this: Assuming the Thunder make the playoffs, at least one of those eight teams won’t even make Round 1 of the postseason.

“I think the Western Conference is the best conference I’ve ever seen. This is my 29th year in the NBA,” said Tim Connelly, Minnesota’s president of basketball operations. “I’ve never seen such a talent-rich conference. … We’re not going to duck anybody. We can’t wait to see where we stand up in this kind of historically stacked Western Conference.”

The Eastern Conference has a slew of intrigue.

Defending East champion Indiana lost Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon in Game 7 of the finals and knows he won’t play this season, then lost Myles Turner in free agency to Milwaukee. Boston — the big preseason favorite to win last season’s title after being champions in 2024 — is waiting to see if, or when, Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles tendon will allow him to return. Philadelphia had a wasted season last year because of injuries and now gets another chance at seeing if Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George can make a run. Cleveland and New York are established and expected to be near or at the top, with upstarts like Orlando, Detroit and Atlanta poised to give themselves contending opportunities as well.

“I think the team that wins the East will feel like they can win it, just like the team that wins in the West,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers said. “Last year I made the case that I thought the East was every bit as good as the West at the top. Now two teams have taken a hit. That may have changed.”

The Thunder are trying not to change.

They are no longer chasing. They are the ones being chased. That, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault hopes, is the only real difference between this season and last. This season will bring unplanned challenges, he said, and how the Thunder react in those moments may wind up telling the tale of this season.

“It’s pretty unpredictable as to where that will go,” Daigneault said. “What is predictable is the solution to it and the things that we’ll rely on. We’ve always relied on being very present. We’ve always relied on stacking the days. We’ve always relied on continuous improvement and an emphasis on the things that kind of transcend circumstances. And that’s really where our focus has been, and is, and will continue to be.”

Reynolds writes for the Associated Press.

For female state lawmakers in Kentucky, choosing when to go to the bathroom has long required careful calculation.

There are only two bathroom stalls for women on the third floor of the Kentucky Statehouse, where the House and Senate chambers are located. Female legislators — 41 of the 138-member Legislature — needing a reprieve during a lengthy floor session have to weigh the risk of missing an important debate or a critical vote.

None of their male colleagues face the same dilemma because, of course, multiple men’s bathrooms are available. The Legislature even installed speakers in the men’s bathrooms to broadcast the chamber’s events so they don’t miss anything important.

In a pinch, House Speaker David Osborne allows women to use his single-stall bathroom in the chamber, but even that attracts long lines.

“You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,” said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Democrat from Louisville, reflecting on the photos of former lawmakers, predominantly male, that line her office.

The issue of potty parity may seem comic, but its impact runs deeper than uncomfortably full bladders, said Kathryn Anthony, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Architecture.

“It’s absolutely critical because the built environment reflects our culture and reflects our population,” said Anthony, who has testified on the issue before Congress. “And if you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.”

There is hope for Kentucky’s lady legislators seeking more chamber potties.

A $300-million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol — scheduled for completion by 2028 at the soonest — aims to create more women’s restrooms and end Kentucky’s bathroom disparity.

The Bluegrass State is among the last to add bathrooms to aging statehouses that were built when female legislators were not a consideration.

In the $392-million renovation of the Georgia Capitol, expanding bathroom access is a priority, said Gerald Pilgrim, chief of staff with the state’s Building Authority. It will introduce facilities for women on the building’s fourth floor, where the public galleries are located, and will add more bathrooms throughout to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“We know there are not enough bathrooms,” he said.

Evolving equality in statehouses

There’s no federal law requiring bathroom access for all genders in public buildings. Some 20 states have statutes prescribing how many washrooms buildings must have, but historical buildings — such as statehouses — are often exempt.

Over the years, as the makeup of state governments has changed, statehouses have added bathrooms for women.

When Tennessee’s Capitol opened in 1859, the architects designed only one restroom — for men only — situated on the ground floor. According to legislative librarian Eddie Weeks, the toilet could only be “flushed” when enough rainwater had been collected.

“The room was famously described as ‘a stench in the nostrils of decency,’” Weeks said in an email.

Today, Tennessee’s Capitol has a women’s bathroom located between the Senate and House chambers. It’s in a cramped hall under a staircase, sparking comparisons to Harry Potter’s cupboard bedroom, and it contains just two stalls. The men also just have one bathroom on the same floor, but it has three urinals and three stalls.

Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, who was elected in 2023, said she wasn’t aware of the disparity in facilities until contacted by the Associated Press.

“I’ve apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,” she said.

“I had to fight to get elected to a Legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn’t exist — or at least didn’t have bladders,” Behn said.

The Maryland State House is the country’s oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, operational since the late 1700s. Archivists say its bathroom facilities were initially intended for white men only because desegregation laws were still in place. Women’s restrooms were added after 1922, but they were insufficient for the rising number of women elected to office.

Delegate Pauline Menes complained about the issue so much that House Speaker Thomas Lowe appointed her chair of the “Ladies Rest Room Committee,” and presented her with a fur-covered toilet seat in front of her colleagues in 1972. She launched the women’s caucus the following year.

It wasn’t until 2019 that House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, the first woman to secure that position, ordered the addition of more women’s restrooms along with a gender-neutral bathroom and a nursing room for mothers in the Lowe House Office Building.

‘No longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic’

As more women were elected nationwide in the 20th century, some found creative workarounds.

In Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature, female senators didn’t get a dedicated restroom until 1988, when a facility was added in the chamber’s cloakroom. There had previously been a single restroom in the Senate lounge, and Sen. Shirley Marsh, who served for some 16 years, would ask a State Patrol trooper to guard the door while she used it, said Brandon Metzler, the Legislature’s clerk.

In Colorado, female House representatives and staff were so happy to have a restroom added in the chamber’s hallway in 1987 that they hung a plaque to honor then-state Rep. Arie Taylor, the state’s first Black woman legislator, who pushed for the facility.

The plaque, now inside a women’s bathroom in the Capitol, reads: “Once here beneath the golden dome if nature made a call, we’d have to scramble from our seats and dash across the hall … Then Arie took the mike once more to push an urge organic, no longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic.”

The poem concludes: “In mem’ry of you, Arie (may you never be forgot), from this day forth we’ll call that room the Taylor Chamber Pot.”

New Mexico Democratic state Rep. Liz Thomson recalled missing votes in the House during her first year in office in 2013 because there was no women’s restroom in the chamber’s lounge. An increase in female lawmakers — New Mexico elected the largest female-majority Legislature in U.S. history in 2024 — helped raise awareness of the issue, she said.

“It seems kind of like fluff, but it really isn’t,” she said. “To me, it really talks about respect and inclusion.”

The issue is not exclusive to statehouses. In the U.S. Capitol, the first restroom for congresswomen didn’t open until 1962. While a facility was made available for female U.S. Senators in 1992, it wasn’t until 2011 that the House chamber opened a bathroom to female lawmakers.

Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to a congressional seat. That happened in 1916.

Willner insists that knowing the Kentucky Capitol wasn’t designed for women gives her extra impetus to stand up and make herself heard.

“This building was not designed for me,” she said. “Well, guess what? I’m here.”

Kruesi and Rush write for the Associated Press. AP writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this report.