Priorities For Oklahoma City’s Continued Push Forward

There’s three primary avenues in which NBA franchises can improve their respective rosters during the offseason. Between the draft, free agency and the trade market, plenty of opportunities to take a step forward exist every summer.

For a small market team like the Oklahoma City Thunder, free agency is generally leveraged to add marginal pieces to the roster. Making a big splash in signing a star rarely ever happens. As such, the draft and making trades are the two best ways continue pushing the roster towards contention.

Regardless of the various acquisition opportunities Oklahoma City explores in the coming months, there are clear needs this team needs to address. Many of these needs revolve around perimeter shooting, paint presence, rebounding and interior defense.

Due to these needs, the Thunder is best suited to add a wing or forward this summer. With that in mind, there’s quite a few players currently on the roster that are still early in their development that have the upside to naturally fill some of these voids. Even then, a versatile forward with positional size and two-way impact is needed. As early as next season Oklahoma City will have the talent to make a push for the playoffs. Especially with Chet Holmgren returning from injury next season, finding his perfect frontcourt pairing will be a key piece of the puzzle as the rebuild in OKC continues to unfold.

Whether it’s more of a traditional wing that has good positional size and the length to defend bigger players, or a floor spacing big that possesses the foot speed to guard on the perimeter, a solid forward is a clear need for the Thunder.

Again, it’s unlikely that Oklahoma City makes many big moves in free agency. Thunder GM Sam Presti even hinted at this during end of season interviews.

“We’ll look at everything, but we’ve generally been pretty conservative in how we’ve approached that [free agency],” said Presti. “Space is an asset. How do you maximize that asset?”

He would go on to say the Thunder have never been major players on the free agent market and has always taken a more unorthodox approach to taking advantage of financial flexibility. The past few years, Oklahoma City has leveraged its cap space to take on unwanted contracts attached to assets.

However, if the Thunder did want to make a move the cap space is readily available. It’s not the most talented free agent class set to his the market this summer, but there are a few names that could make sense in theory. Players that are still young enough to fit what Oklahoma City is building include Jaxson Hayes, PJ Washington, Damian Jones and Thomas Bryant.

It doesn’t feel as if the Thunder will make a major trade this summer either, unless it happens on draft night. If OKC wants to go make a move for a player, the assets to do so are in place. The Thunder has a tremendous amount of draft capital, young enticing players and cap flexibility.

The one thing that will almost certainly happen this summer is the Thunder adding at least one rookie in the upcoming 2023 NBA Draft. Oklahoma City is set to have one first-round selection and two second rounders. The first of the Thunder’s picks will be in the lottery, but it hasn’t yet been decided where exactly that pick will fall. On Tuesday night, the draft lottery will take place as the first 14 picks of this summer’s draft will be official. While there’s a small chance OKC could end up with a top four selection, the overwhelming odds (85.2%) point to the Thunder entering the draft with the No. 12 overall pick.

Assuming this is the case, there’s actually quite a few intriguing prospects that check the boxes of what the Thunder needs in that range. It could take trading future picks to move up a few spots, or even trading back depending on how things fall the night of, but there’s no shortage of forwards that fit what Oklahoma City needs. Taylor Hendricks, Gradey Dick, Jett Howard, Bilal Coulibaly, Leonard Miller and several others would be fantastic additions to this Thunder team.

With the high expectations Oklahoma City will have next season, adding a key piece to the roster to play alongside Holmgren will be critical to the success of the 2023-24 campaign. Whether that piece is added through the draft, free agency or trade, Presti and his team will be exploring many options.