OKC Thunder Prospect Evaluation: Ranking The Roster
With the 2021-22 season just over a month away, training camp is set to take place in the coming weeks as the Oklahoma City Thunder look to trim down their roster to 15 full-time players along with their pair of two-way prospects. With that in mind, the Inside the Thunder team has been ranking each player on the current roster based on how they grade as a prospect.
These grades were given relative to how each prospect ranks amongst their peers on the OKC roster and how they project to develop over the next few years. With an extremely young team full of talent, there's quite a few players who have the opportunity to become excellent NBA players.
Whether these prospects end up being stars or simply role players off the bench, the Thunder will need a good balance when the time comes to make a playoff push again in a few years.
Let's take a look at how the prospect rankings played out:
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: A+
- Aleksej Pokusevski: A
- Josh Giddey: A
- Lu Dort: B+
- Darius Bazley: B+
- Tre Mann: B+
- Theo Maledon: B
- Ty Jerome: B
- Jeremiah Robinson-Earl: B-
- Vit Krejci: B-
- Aaron Wiggins: B-
- Josh Hall: B-
- Isaiah Roby: C+
- Kenrich Williams: C+
- Derrick Favors: C+
- Mike Muscala: C+
- Gabriel Deck: D+
- Charlie Brown Jr: D+
With the Thunder likely carrying a few more players than this into training camp, there will have to be some roster trimming that takes place over the next month or so. While there's a solid core of players who have solidified roster spots, the final few slots will be up for grabs between a handful of prospects.
At the top, guys like Gilgeous-Alexander, Pokusevski and Giddey project to headline the Thunder roster when it's time to be competitive once again, although they'll be joined by several top-level draft picks over the next few seasons.
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