Still recovering their reputation from the 2012 James Harden trade, the Oklahoma City Thunder have slowly flipped the narrative that their ownership group. They have gone from a group known as too small to a team ready to back up the Brink’s trucks when it’s time to pay the NBA champion.

After celebrating the Larry O’Brien trophy, the Thunder committed over $800 million of combined contract extensions for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. If any fanbase knows not to take the mundane process for granted, it’s OKC fans.

Starting in the 2026-27 season, the Thunder will begin several seasons where they’ll be at the top or near it in team payroll. That will almost be a result of just those three players. Expect Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren to take up around 80% of the future payrolls. The rest of the roster will require front office creativity to fill out.

That said, Thunder general manager Sam Presti assured OKC’s ownership group is ready to pay up. In fact, it happened this past summer. Just goes to show that Thunder owner Clay Bennett and company won’t force the front office to shave talent to avoid the luxury tax or boogeyman Second Apron.

“Our ownership group is fiercely committed to supporting the team, as we talked about, the mutual commitment component to a small market franchise,” Presti said. “I think it’s extremely important that everyone is mutually committed and everybody understands this is coming.”

The highlight of Presti’s 2025-26 preseason press conference was his lengthy answer about misguided concerns over how expensive the Thunder will get in the coming years. He notes that the new OKC arena and the NBA’s new broadcast partnerships should help with that.

“We knew five years ago when we repositioned and replenished that team that if we were to ever get back to the postseason or exceed past being just an average playoff team, we would need the resources to support that,” Presti said. “We saw that during the first mountain.”

So far, the Thunder have stuck to their plan. Of course, upcoming contract extensions with key role players like Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort and Cason Wallace are the next hurdle they must clear. We’ll see if they can keep all three, but more importantly, it’ll be interesting to see how they prioritize those three players next summer.