OKC Thunder’s Recent Trades Paves Way for Draft and Player Development

On Thursday, the Oklahoma City Thunder pulled the trigger on a pair of trades that would send Mike Muscala to the Boston Celtics and Darius Bazley to the Phoenix Suns. The overall return?

In a nutshell: Dario Saric’s expiring $9.2M contract and three second-round picks. Not a bad haul for two players not long for the Thunder.

You see, the Thunder were in a bit of a corner.

Bazley hadn’t developed as hoped and was heading towards restricted free agency this summer while the front office gave no indication of being interested in re-signing the mercurial forward prospect.

The 31-year-old Muscala, while highly impactful in his time in Oklahoma City, was the odd man out on a team full of young and budding talent that expects to welcome Chet Holmgren to the fold next season, if things go as planned.

Meanwhile, the Thunder are expected to have two or three draft picks in the 2023 NBA Draft.

According to Tankathon, the franchise is currently positioned to hold the 13th and the 40th picks come draft time, but that could change depending on how the season shakes out due to the Thunder possessing conditional picks acquired in prior deals from other NBA teams.

And with the Thunder’s roster maxed out at 15 players prior to the deadline, the front office needed to figure out how to open up the prerequisite space to welcome their incoming rookies in 2023-24.

Their activity at the deadline did just that.

Sure, they could have just let Bazley walk and chosen to not pick-up their club option on Muscala at the end of the season, but the Thunder’s trading away of the two players distanced themselves from the possibility of re-signing both whilst accumulating more draft capital.

While Saric is expected to stick around for the remainder of the regular season, his contract will fall off the books after this year and another roster spot will open up, giving the Thunder an option to re-sign the oft-injured 29-year-old or reserve said spot to sign one of their draft selections.

Given General Manager Sam Presti’s belief in small-market franchises building through the draft and controllable contracts, it’s likely that he will opt to draft and sign at least two rookies this offseason instead of kicking the can down the road.

Ultimately, the dealings of Bazley and Muscala should also open up more playing time for the Thunder’s developing young guns. Muscala was averaging 14.5 minutes through 43 games while Bazley was averaging 15.4 through 36.

How head coach Mark Daigneault plans on doling out those minutes remains to be seen, but anyone from Jaylin Williams and Aleksej Pokusevski to Ousmane Dieng and Tre Mann could stand to benefit from increased playing time.

Whatever the case, Presti has the Thunder primed and ready to continue developing and will have the chance to welcome more talented rookies via the NBA Draft.

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