Thunder’s Draft Positioning Still Unsettled Despite Regular Season Ending

The regular season is officially over around the NBA, meaning a clear pivot towards the postseason and the offseason beyond has happened. While every team around the league has completed their respective 82-game regular seasons, draft positioning in many situations is still unsettled.

That’s especially true for the Oklahoma City Thunder, who still don’t know how many picks the team will have in the 2025 NBA Draft or exactly where those will be in the order.

As it relates to first-round picks, there were four selections the Thunder owned heading into the regular season, but only three are still on the table at this point.

The only draft clarity Oklahoma City has at this point is that the top-10 protected pick from the Utah Jazz will officially not be conveying. That’s been the case for quite some time now, but the Jazz finished the season with the worst record in the NBA, meaning based on the lottery system, that selection can’t fall outside of the top five. As such, the Thunder’s rights to this pick will be deferred to the 2026 NBA Draft with top-eight protections.

From there, the Thunder has two potential picks that could convey depending on how events over the next month unfold. The first of those two that will be determined is the Miami Heat pick that OKC owns the right to, but it’s lottery-protected. Miami is currently slated to have No. 11 odds in the draft lottery, but if the Heat make the playoffs via the Play-In Tournament, that changes everything. If that happens, Miami will no longer be in the running for a lottery pick, and the Thunder will get that selection just outside the lottery. Miami retains the pick if the Heat miss the playoffs by losing any game in the Play-In Tournament. If that happens, Oklahoma City would then have the rights to Miami’s unprotected first-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft next summer.

The second of the two potential picks that still haven’t been determined yet is the selection via the Philadelphia 76ers. But we’ll have to wait until much later than the Play-In Tournament to find that out, as the NBA Draft Lottery (May 12) is the event that will decide that fate. Given the pick is top-six protected, and Philadelphia has the fifth-best lottery odds, there’s only a 36% chance it conveys to OKC, which would only happen if the pick lands outside the top six — with No. 7 to No. 9 being the only mathematically possible scenarios in that case. This means that the Sixers have a 64% chance that it lands in the top-six, and they retain that pick.

No. 7: 26.7%
No. 8: 8.7%
No. 9: 0.6%

If Philadelphia ends up keeping its pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, the Thunder will then have the rights to the Sixers’ first-round pick in the following draft (2026) with top-four protections.

The only solidified first-round pick that OKC is guaranteed to have is the LA Clippers’ selection. The Thunder owns the right to swap with either the Clippers or the Houston Rockets, but LA has the more favorable pick. Instead of drafting at No. 30, the last pick in the first round, Oklahoma City will swap with the Clippers, which will be an earlier selection.

But even then, we still don’t know exactly where that pick will fall in the first round, as the Clippers and three other teams tied with the same regular season record. As such, coin flips will determine who lands the No. 22, No. 23, No. 24 and No. 25 picks, given that’s the range of where those teams tied in the reverse standings. This means that the Thunder’s only guaranteed first-round pick will be somewhere in that range, but that won’t be determined until later when the NBA breaks the ties.

In short, the regular season has come to a close, but the Oklahoma City Thunder still has very little clarity on how the 2025 NBA Draft could shake out from both a pick quantity and positioning standpoint.