{"id":682551,"date":"2026-03-27T17:56:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/682551\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:56:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:56:24","slug":"thunder-might-lose-lu-dort-for-reason-that-isnt-okcs-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/682551\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder might lose Lu Dort for reason that isn’t OKC’s fault"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> have created a fascinating dilemma for themselves.<\/p>\n

Most of the time, it’s a good problem to have. They simply have too many good players.<\/p>\n

But in a couple years, when there’s a potential NBA expansion draft, it creates a different issue.<\/p>\n

Usually, when the NBA holds an expansion draft, teams are allowed to protect a certain amount of players, but not their whole roster.<\/p>\n

For bad teams, that might be a non-issue. They don’t have a whole roster’s worth of players to protect.<\/p>\n

For the Thunder? Someone good will be left available.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Bronny James has a new path to leaving Lakers<\/a><\/p>\n

When the teams, trending toward being Seattle and Las Vegas, look at who to pick, there’s going to be a strong OKC player on the board.<\/p>\n

The Sporting News’ Stephen Noh projects<\/a> it to be Lu Dort.<\/p>\n

“The Thunder have too many good players to protect,” Noh writes. “One of their rotation pieces is going to get taken in this expansion draft. Dort makes the most sense. He’s a great defender, but his shot has fallen off. Oklahoma City has ways to replace him with Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace in the fold.”<\/p>\n

There is one piece of good news for the Thunder: Generally, expansion drafts in the NBA have only allowed one player to be chosen from each team.<\/p>\n

If that was Dort off the board, another OKC player couldn’t be taken after that.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s not ideal. Good teams have built themselves up in impressive ways, and losing talent is never fun.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City has a little bit of time to potentially plan ahead, too, in case the Thunder have a way to avoid a dilemma like this while not subtracting from their championship level of play.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder have created a fascinating dilemma for themselves. Most of the time, it’s a good…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-682551","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\/116302432775182941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682551","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=682551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}