With Trade Deadline in the Rear-View Mirror, Thunder Prepare to Focus on Road Ahead

Teams with a bottom-4 record don’t typically have as much speculation surrounding them as the Oklahoma City thunder did this year around.

Teams with a bottom-4 record typically are allowed to remain quietly in the depths of the league standings as they march toward the promised land of a future playoff berth. The Thunder, however, aren’t your typical bottom-4 team.

The Thunder don’t have a bad contract on the roster. It entered the trade deadline as the league's lone team below the $101,173,000 salary cap floor, meaning it had far and away the most cap room to work with. That room allowed GM Sam Presti to take on the contract of KZ Okpala earlier in the week to improve a draft pick.

A team with a bottom-4 record also typically doesn’t come with many players that would attract the interest of playoff contenders. Kenrich Williams, being the most attractive prospect for contenders, was rumored to have drawn interest from multiple teams.

Recent injuries to leading scorer Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and reserve sharpshooter Mike Muscala have left OKC short on players with more than two years of NBA experience — something the Thunder are short on as the league’s youngest team.

Put those together with injuries to some of its younger members in Isaiah Roby, Aaron Wiggins and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and the Thunder are simply light on healthy bodies at the moment.

The young core of Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh giddey and Tre Mann, among others, are clearly the future of a successful roster, but it is what they do now that determines how quickly they reach that success, and who they do it with.

The importance of having veterans on a team as young as OKC is cannot be overstated, and it is that value — paired with a lack of bodies — that likely made it an easy decision for Presti to keep hold of Williams as well as Muscala despite any interest they may have had.

Now, more than 24 hours past the deadline, the Thunder roster is set. No more limbo. No more questions as to who would be on the roster week-to-week.

Few front office executives love to tinker as the season goes along more than Presti, so there’s no guarantee this will be the same group that finishes the season, but Mark Daigneault and his team have most of the uncertainty behind them and can now focus on developing the rest of this season with eyes on the next.

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