Thunder Running Thin With Roster Space Makes Future Drafts Complicated

The Oklahoma City Thunder have drafted fairly well a few years into their short rebuild, which poses a good problem to have.

Before the Oklahoma City Thunder began their rebuild, they were a perennial playoff team. Then, they made the playoffs when the rebuild was supposed to kick off. Finally, on the second attempt, the rebuild kicked off and the Thunder landed a solid pick.

The Thunder’s solid drafting may come back to cause some good problems to have and decisions to make in future offseasons. Drafting a solid 2021 class, which included Josh Giddey, Tre Mann, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Aaron Wiggins, made it rough for the Thunder to bring in their 2022 draft class with plenty of minutes.

After the impressive 2021 draft class, the Thunder brought in Jalen Williams at pick no. 12 – as he finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting. He was incredibly impressive and more than the Thunder were ready to bring on. Jaylin Williams brought in his timely play after the Thunder were stretched thin with injuries.

Then there’s Ousmane Dieng, who displayed most of his talent in the G League because the Thunder had the luxury of competing while developing young talent. Obviously, Chet Holmgren was unable to play all season, and that adds another layer to the young depth this Thunder team has.

This all was across two draft classes, and doesn’t account for bringing in vets to help maintain culture, and, of course, the team’s superstar in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He went from near-All-Star to All-NBA First Team over the course of a season – which led to the 6-foot-6 guard leading the odds for Most Improved Player for most of the season before Lauri Markkanen made a late push to steal the award.

With the load of young talent needing to be displayed or nurtured, the Thunder are forced into a good problem of asset management. Obviously, it would be great for the Thunder to have leverage as to when they can cash in on the assets, but time is catching up to them.

There’s a few routes the Thunder can go, and not all are positive, but don’t necessarily hurt the team. Either the Thunder can give up on other young talents to make room for new, young draft picks, package draft picks for one, better-valued pick or try and use the assets to cash in on a star that complements the current Thunder roster.

There may be no right or wrong answer in this scenario, and, as mentioned, the overload of young talent and assets to work with is ultimately a good problem, so now it’s up to Sam Presti to capitalize and set this promising team up to bring home some hardware in the near-future.

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