The NBA’s Worst Nightmare Is Here…

The NBA’s Worst Nightmare Is Here…

The Oklahoma City Thunder are terrifying. They’re at the top of the Western Conference. All their advanced numbers are crazy. They have the best defense in the league by far, and they look to be a threat to break the NBA’s regular season wins record set by the Warriors just a few years ago, which I may or may not have predicted before the season. The Oklahoma City Thunder are going to break the NBA wins record this year. That would require them going 74-8. But what’s even crazier is one, they’re doing all of this without Jaylen Williams, who is an allNBA caliber player. And things could actually get even scarier around the Thunder for the rest of the league after this season. And it’s just crazy to think that a team that has been as good as they have for the last year and some change could actually be even better moving forward. But first, we got to talk about this season. The thing you need to know is this is a historically great defense just like it was last year. Uh the Thunder are number one in defensive rating in the league this year. But that is completely underselling just how good they’ve been. The gap between Oklahoma City at one in defensive rating and the Denver Never Nuggets who are second in defensive rating is as big as the gap between two the Nuggets and the 20th best defensive rating in the league which is the Milwaukee Bucks. The Thunder are lapping teams defensively because they do basically everything right. They’re number one in the league in terms of not giving up points off of offensive rebounds. They’re number one in the league in terms of not giving up points on the fast break. They don’t foul a ton. They don’t give up a ton of free throws. They don’t turn the ball over a ton. They are an elite defensive team. And oh, by the way, they also have a top five offense in the league. This is a historically great team without Jaylen Williams even playing to begin the season. SGA, of course, looks great coming off of an MVP season. He’s also able to rest in like half of the fourth quarters this year. It seems like every other game that OKC plays, they’re up by so much that he just doesn’t have to be out there in the fourth quarter. Chad Homegrren has taken a step forward without Jaylen Williams out there. They’ve got incredible depth. AJ Mitchell has come out of relative nowhere to be this unbelievable guard for them as well. And they are unquestionably as of this recording, assuming Jaylen Williams comes back and is healthy, the favorite to win the title once again this season. And although we knew that coming into the year, one of the things that was semi in question is what the future of the Thunder looked like. You would assume that this team has an unbelievable future with the young core of SGA and Jaylen Williams and Chad Homegrren. And that is correct. However, they also paid all three of those guys a ton of money this off seasonason. And I and other people made videos talking about how that could potentially be limiting to their future. You have great players, you want to pay them. But the way the NBA’s payment structure has been set up over the last handful of years, most teams around the league are very concerned about having three max contract players on their team, which the Thunder do because it just makes it more difficult, without getting into all the details, to build out the rest of the roster. Well, so there was an argument to be made that last year and this year were the best versions of the Thunder because guys like Lou Dort and Isaiah Hartinstein and Alex Caruso that are relatively expensive are going to have to go elsewhere in order for the Thunder to maintain their core three of guys and obviously Chad SGA and Jaylen Williams. That was a thought that people had and in general it made sense. And although that is definitely an oversimplification of the way that roster building works in the modern NBA, mostly it’s true. But the Thunder had a solution. They’ve been stockpiling all kinds of draft picks over the last handful of seasons, even as they’ve added guys through the draft like Chad and Jaylen Williams. They’ve just continued to add pieces in all these different moves. And the number one thing that allows you to do is have costcontrolled rookie contracts on your roster, which is the biggest way you can actually still build a competitive team around the three max contracts that they have on their roster. For example, when you look at their payroll sheet, you see the three big contracts, but you also see guys that are really integral to their rotation making basically nothing in comparison to how large the salary cap is in the NBA. And that is pretty much the only way in the modern NBA that you can build a deep team while also having the star power at the top that the Thunder do. You need to make sure to not only draft good players, but also have them fit a role and contribute right away while they are on these smaller rookie scale contracts. And the Thunder, although you can certainly be nervous about one, the overall number in terms of how much money you’re paying these guys, but two, potential injury issues with someone like Cadet. And then we’re seeing Jaylen Williams start the year hurt this year as well. The biggest way to combat that would be making sure that you have all of these picks. And that’s exactly what the Thunder have been able to do. And coming into the season, we knew all of this. We knew that Oklahoma City was going to be good. We knew that they had three giant contracts on the roster. And we knew that they had draft picks to potentially continue to add depth, but it was going to put a lot of pressure on their ability to continue to draft really, really well. The thing that we didn’t know was just how high some of these draft picks might be and how much that could completely change, just how good Oklahoma City could be over the next couple of seasons because the assumption was all of these extra picks that the Thunder have would be in the middle of the first round or obviously their own pick would be very late in the first round. And so you might end up with someone that’s a good role player, can guard a little bit, can shoot a little bit, but you’re not going to be adding a fourth big-time player at a really small salary unless you draft really well as a Thunder have over the last couple years. But statistically speaking, it’s very unlikely that outside of the lottery, you’re going to be getting some kind of star player that’s going to make this just an untenable situation for the rest of the league. But what has changed coming into this season is where exactly some of these extra picks Oklahoma City has are going to potentially end up in the draft. They have two picks for this season. And depending on where they land, they could actually make this bit like whatever’s beyond a dynasty for Oklahoma City. The first pick and the most concerning one if you’re the rest of the league is the LA Clippers. A Clippers team that is old, that is broken, that is injured. They owe their first round pick in the 2026 NBA draft unprotected to the Oklahoma City Thunder. And as of this recording, it is not unlikely that that pick becomes a top five pick, a top three pick, maybe the first overall pick in the draft. That is a real possibility right now for Oklahoma City where they have their core three of guys, they have all of this depth, and they could just add the first overall pick in an absolutely loaded draft class. That would be an unprecedented scenario. It’s never happened where things have lined up with a historically great young team also getting a number one overall pick in a loaded draft class. And to be honest, if that happens, if that scenario unfolds in Oklahoma City, we might be getting to like a lack of competitive balance issue within the league, depending on how the number one overall pick works out. There’s a lot of variables here, right? But this is a proven championship team adding the single best coste effective asset you could possibly add which is a great number one overall pick that also helps them more than any other team because they have these giant contracts and they’re going to be counting more than any other team around the league on costcontrolled assets. It is an unbelievable scenario that is unfolding. Now the counter to this would be the Clippers have no reason to be bad. They’ve put together a roster that is supposed to be competitive and as the season goes along in comparison to some of these other teams that are incentivized to be bad. Washington, Indiana, the Nets, Dallas potentially entering that conversation, the Clippers realistically should climb out of this slow start to the season because they don’t have their pick. There’s no reason for them to be bad whereas other teams will basically be intentionally losing regardless. the fact that there’s even a small possibility they could get a top three pick in a loaded class and also with the way the lottery odds have been flattened. We saw Dallas last year go from 11 all the way up to one and continually giving Oklahoma City bites at the apple here with top three top five picks is a terrifying scenario for the rest of the league. And that’s not the only high pick they could possibly add here because the other pick they have access to apart from their own this season is the Utah Jazz. Now, that might seem even scarier than the Clippers pick. But fortunately, this is a top eight protected pick. So, if Utah’s pick lands in the top eight, OKC does not get it. And there’s no rollover on this pick. If Oklahoma City doesn’t get it this year, it just goes away. The obligation is extinguished. They don’t have to deal with it anymore. But, there still exists a scenario where Utah’s better than we expect or they get bad lottery luck the way they traditionally had the last handful of seasons and the Thunder add a top 10 pick in this class, ninth, 10th overall, and again, a very loaded class. funnily enough, they only have access to this pick because the Jazz salary dumped Derek Favorvers on the Oklahoma City Thunder, which is just a crazy thing to potentially turn into, you know, the ninth pick in a very good draft class. And again, I really can’t overstate just how perfectly this situation could align for Oklahoma City. An expensive team, but one that is a proven championship contender and even honestly a level above that. not just a proven championship contender, a team that won a title and during the regular season continues to be an absolute juggernaut. They are destroying teams on a nightly basis. And the one thing that they need to continue this moving forward to continue to justify paying these three guys as much money as they are is to get these costcontrolled assets. And that is the number one thing you could wish for right now if you were an Oklahoma City Thunder fan or in the front office is to continue to get high picks. all these extra picks that they have continue to turn them into high picks, guys that are actually going to help their team and be cost controlled for four seasons. And if that happens, there is a scenario here where Oklahoma City ends up with the first pick and the ninth pick in the draft and they just won the title and they could do a lot of things. They could trade the first overall pick for Giannis if they wanted to. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense given their salary structure, but they could. and continuing to give this team, this roster construction, this many options makes it borderline impossible for other teams to compete with this Oklahoma City team, barring injuries and a variety of things. There are obviously still a lot of variables. It is the very beginning of the season. We don’t know where these picks are going to end up. The Thunder could end up with like the 13th pick in the draft and then not get the Jazz pick and this could be not that big of a deal. The fact that this is even remotely possible is completely terrifying for the rest of the league.

The OKC Thunder are terrifying… they’re at the top of the West, with crazy good advanced numbers, look to be a threat to break the NBA regular season wins record (which I may have predicted before the season)… and they’re doing all of this without Jalen Williams to start the year AND… things might get even more scary for the rest of the league AFTER this season for the Thunder.

#thunder #okcthunder #nba