Standings Beginning to Solidify for Thunder

With just 16 games left on Oklahoma City’s slate, the standings are beginning to solidify for teams vying for draft position.

The Thunder are locked into the reverse four-seed at the moment, and are likely trying to climb as high as possible towards better draft odds in their late stretch.

But the Pistons have a 2.5 game lead, and the Magic and Rockets are nearly unreachable for OKC.

Detroit, standing at 18-49, has six wins in it’s last ten tries, but are still going to be hard to catch. With a very limited amount of games left, all signs are pointing towards the Thunder maintaining the fourth best odds for the upcoming draft.

Fourth won’t be terrible odds for the upcoming draft, which likely holds four players with legitimate star power before a family significant drop off, but it’s likely further down than general manager Sam Presti would’ve liked.

Last season, Oklahoma City held the fourth best odds, and slipped two spots to the No. 6 pick. They also had a nearly 50 percent chance to land the Rockets picks, and missed out on that as well.

Needless to say, Presti will be pushing to land better odds than they hold now, or OKC will again find themselves hoping that the theoretical ping pong balls fall in their favor.

Oklahoma City has a two game lead on Indiana, but with nine players sitting due to injury in their last few games, it isn’t likely the Pacers are able to catch OKC.

The Thunder tip off against the Grizzlies at 6 p.m. in Paycom Center.

Want to join the discussion? Like SI Thunder on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest Thunder news. You can also meet the team behind the coverage.