Oklahoma City Thunder Keep Solidifying Long-Term Core With Kenrich Williams Extension

“He may be among his peers, just from my observations, the most respected guy in the locker room,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of Kenrich Williams during his first season with the team.

After two years of carving out a role as a quality contributor on the court and impactful leader off of it, Williams has earned a four-year, $27.2M extension with Oklahoma City. He becomes just the second undrafted player to sign a deal this summer, following in the footsteps of his teammate Lu Dort.

This sets Williams up to be even closer to retiring as a member of the Thunder, which is something he’s said he wants to do multiple times. The new deal will kick in at the start of the 2023-24 season and will run through the 2026-27 season.

“I want to be here with the Thunder. This might sound far fetched, but I would like to retire here with the Oklahoma City Thunder,” said Williams earlier this year.

With that in mind, this path to his first major payday was anything but linear. The 6-foot-6 wing was never a big recruit, starting his collegiate career at a junior college before finishing TCU. After going undrafted in 2018, he earned a contract with the New Orleans Pelicans following an impressive NBA Summer League stint with the Denver Nuggets.

In his first two seasons with the Pelicans, Williams was extremely inefficient. He shot just 37.1% from the floor and 30.4% from beyond the arc. Williams produced just 4.9 points and 4.8 rebounds in 21.7 minutes per game during those two seasons in New Orleans.

From there, he would get a fresh start. Williams was essentially used for salary matching purposes in a trade that sent Steven Adams from Oklahoma City to New Orleans. To facilitate this deal, Williams was signed to a three-year, $6 million deal on his way to the Thunder.

In a new city with a different role, Williams immediately thrived in OKC. In his very first season with the team, he doubled his scoring output from the season prior as he produced 8.0 points per contest. He also became a much more efficient shooter, knocking down 44.4% of his triples and 53.3% of his shots from the floor overall.

Williams became a vocal leader on the young Thunder roster, but also was having a tremendous impact on winning.

This got the attention of many teams around the league. During both of Williams’ seasons in Oklahoma City to this point, rival teams have attempted to trade for him. To this point, Thunder GM Sam Presti hasn’t budged.

In fact, Presti instead decided to extend Williams for four years. This officially makes the two-way wing a part of the longterm core in Oklahoma City.

There’s only a handful of players on the Thunder roster that are under contract for at least four more years, with Williams being the newest on that list. He joins Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, Jaylin Williams and Ousmane Dieng. It’s also likely that Josh Giddey and Tre Mann earn rookie extensions three years from now and continue to be part of the group.

As such, a real core is beginning to form OKC. It’s one that has tremendous upside and could be a contending squad in a few years.

One of the toughest players in the league, Williams is a legitimate two-way threat that has the versatility and positional size that every team wants. He’s earned every dollar of this extension and will only continue to be impactful with the Thunder for the remainder of the rebuild and beyond.

Even then, he’s going to be on a manageable deal that will be easy to trade for assets if needed down the road. For both sides, this four-year, $27.2M extension made a ton of sense.