How are the Thunder going to ditch 15 players over the next three years?

Cooper Flagg would be “chef’s kiss” perfect

BY HENRY ABBOTT

Do the Thunder have a chance at landing Duke phenom Cooper Flagg in this year’s draft? JARED C. TILTON/GETTY IMAGES

Let’s play a game. It’s a good one, because you get to be Sam Presti, GM of the best team in the NBA.

The setting is opening night of the 2028-2029 season. Maybe, at that point, you’re in the middle of a dynasty? Things are good, and bounteous; to a fault. Thanks to the good young players on the roster right now, and the 15 picks the team has between now and then, the 2028 Thunder have 33 players.

Your job is to get into compliance with one of the NBA’s few really iron-clad rules, and get rid of 15 players—because you’re only allowed to have 18 players on an NBA team—15 on the active roster, and three on two-way deals. (Many teams like to have even fewer than that, to have roster flexibility around the trade deadline.)

Okay, Sam Presti: which 15 players are you going to make disappear?

Here’s a faithful accounting of all the picks, and here are all the current players:

Cutting is difficult. The Thunder have:

• Perfect chemistry. Shai recently said: “I love Oklahoma City and I can’t see a world where I’m not in Oklahoma City. … I love the people in the organization, love the people around me, and those are the things that matter. I go to work every day with a smile on my face.”

• Capacity to improve. What maniac thinks we’ve seen the best of Jalen Williams or Chet Holmgren?

• A pipeline of younger, cheaper role players. Good role players eventually get expensive, and in the new pretty-darn hard-capped NBA, the Nuggets can tell you that losing a Bruce Brown here and a Kentavious Caldwell-Pope there can shatter your dynastic dreams. Sam Presti has already future-proofed the Thunder. Ajay Mitchell can one day be Luguentz Dort. Adam Flagler has the tools to play Isaiah Joe’s role. The Thunder have 19-year-old Nikola Topić, a 6-6 point guard, under contract for four years.

There’s always change. Perhaps an expansion draft will steal a Thunder’s ninth man. People wash out, get injured, or get traded to the Bulls for Alex Caruso. Still, my guess is, there’ll be less churn on this young, talented OKC roster than almost anywhere else.

Especially because this team has just about no one you’d easily cut. If the Thunder were to move on from Lu Dort, hypothetically, they wouldn’t cut him; they’d trade him, because he’s too valuable. That’s not just true of Lu, though; it’s also true of his backup, Ajay Mitchell. Adam Flagler could well be the next Isaiah Joe. And on and on.

Once upon a time this roster was rife with the experiments of rebuilding, and all kinds of nobodies got minutes. That’s all over now. The Thunder might not have 18 keepers, but they have at least a dozen, and more keepers than any other team. (Here’s an SI story about how impressive little-used Ousmane Dieng was when he got some recent burn.)

So, to reduce a roster by 15 without a lot of cutting, you’re looking at trades. You can certainly turn today’s picks into tomorrow’s picks. I guarantee there’ll be some of that. When this team gets bad one day, they’ll be able to get good again quickly. But rather than squirrelling evermore acorns into the attic, the real trick is to use picks to increase the odds of winning a title.

The better your team, the less likely a rookie will improve it any time soon. You need someone who can meaningfully outplay the likes of Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins, or Isaiah Joe. You need incredible players.

Now let me tell you why I think the Thunder just made a huge mistake.