Just two summers ago, the OKC Thunder and Chicago Bulls executed a prime example of a “win-win” trade by swapping Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso.<\/p>\n
Now, mid-way through the 2025-26 campaign, The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie is suggesting that both ball clubs should once again be interested in jumping back into negotiations.<\/p>\n
During a recent edition of the Game Theory Podcast<\/a>, Vecenie proposed the idea of Oklahoma City dialing up Chicago and offering a package of one first-round pick along with someone like Isaiah Joe for fifth-year two-guard Ayo Dosunmu.<\/p>\n “The Bulls love these player-for-player swaps [and] Joe’s on a totally reasonable deal moving forward. The reason you do that, if you’re Oklahoma City, is that you get an extra pseudo ball-handler, which could be helpful for them. You have the Isaiah Joe number off of the books moving forward, and then you have a player that’s a little bit of a better fit for the team this year that can help you a little bit more,” Vecenie said.<\/p>\n Thunder urged to pursue ‘better fit’ Ayo Dosunmu at trade deadline<\/p>\n Teams show who they truly are when hit with adversity, and, during their middling 13-9 stretch since mid-December, the Thunder have proven that, despite what the odds-makers may think<\/a>, they have some glaring weaknesses in their on-court play<\/a> that could use some fine-tuning.<\/p>\n To Vecenie, one of these areas of concern lies in the backcourt behind the likes of star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, as he suggests there’s a lack of secondary and tertiary handler options available within coach Mark Daigneault’s talent pool.<\/p>\n Dosunmu may be more of a two, but he’s shown flashes of being a quality playmaker throughout his tenure with the Bulls, even boasting an assist percentage of roughly 20.0 over the past two seasons.<\/p>\n Here in 2025-26, the Illinois product finds himself posting career-best efforts virtually all across the board, as he’s averaging 14.5 points, 3.4 assists, and 2.7 rebounds while shooting a highly efficient 51.2 percent from the floor and 45.3 percent from distance.<\/p>\n On top of this, though he may only measure in at 6-foot-4, thanks to his 6-foot-8 wingspan, Dosunmu is a player who can not only effectively drive the lane for scoring opportunities, but is more than capable of guarding up beyond his pound-for-pound position assignment.<\/p>\n Of course, this proposed deal goes beyond mere in-game fit, as Vecenie highlighted how the cash-strapped Thunder would benefit in the salary department long-term by swapping the two-and-a-half years remaining on Joe’s four-year, $48 million contract for Dosunmu’s expiring $21 million pact.<\/p>\n While the long-time draft guru doubts Sam Presti and company will wind up doing much of anything ahead of the February 5 trade deadline, in his eyes, the idea of calling up their old friends out in Chicago about the cost of Dosunmu is worth exploring, both from a strategic and salary standpoint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just two summers ago, the OKC Thunder and Chicago Bulls executed a prime example of a “win-win” trade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-564606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-oklahoma","11":"tag-oklahoma-city","12":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","13":"tag-oklahomacity","14":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","15":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115968698655930444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}