What does OKC need to beat Victor Wembanyama?
Big Thunder choices
During training camp, if you’d asked me how many total titles the Thunder would win with their core of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren, I would have guessed four. They were not only the best team in the NBA, and young, but also stocked with an overwhelming number of highly tradable picks and players who could be featured in trades.
They had been right about damn near everything and could afford to be wrong.
But what they don’t have is Victor Wembanyama. Nor, now, this year’s title. And perhaps they also learned that they’re not perfectly built to handle that French dude.
David Thorpe and I are years into noting the Thunder can go and get almost anyone they want. So … should they make that kind of move now?
I expect this will be a critical, era-defining offseason in Thunder history. Either:
They have everything they need to beat the Spurs, if healthy, and will head into luxury tax territory, with its restrictions on roster tweaks, and stay the course.
They will reshuffle to avoid the second apron, but return a similar roster.
They’ll decide they don’t have what it takes, and trade a big name like Chet Holmgren or Jalen Williams.
My guess is that there are several more Thunder titles behind one, but not all, of those doors.
David has been working on a story for the offseason about how to build a team to beat Wemby. We didn’t know, when he started, that it would be a story about the Thunder!
Thorpe’s view is that if the Thunder had been merely healthy they would have been more than 60 percent likely to beat these Spurs. His concern: “the Spurs next year are going to be better. The Thunder don’t have to beat this year’s Spurs team, they’re gonna have to beat next year’s Spurs team.”
Sam Presti is no YOLO gunslinger. He is cautious as they come. A studier. After the Thunder’s first title, he noted that CBA rules take a few years to shake out, to see how they really behave. Is it awful to be in the second apron, or not? The CBA’s big hammers on high-payroll teams are the repeater tax, and the suite of restrictions on the rosters of second apron teams. “As constituted right now, we wouldn’t face the repeater penalties until the next CBA. So we’re far from that,” Presti explained. “The aprons, remains to be seen how we interact with those. But we’ll have to learn as we go along.”
I’ve been examining the aprons, for a forthcoming story, and I’m leaning toward saying that the second apron can royally screw up a contending team. On the long regular season road to the Finals, there is often a need to fill a gap. For the Thunder this year, it was filled by a trade of four draft picks for Jared McCain.
It happened that was the best offer the 76ers could get. And that trade would have also been allowed under CBA rules if the Thunder had been a second apron team. However: trades are hard, and the odds are not high that in many future situations the best deal in the market will come from a team that’s forbidden from aggregating contracts, can’t include cash, and has extremely restrictive salary matching rules. Draft picks are the Thunder’s forte, and a nice loophole to all this, because they can be aggregated with a player, but to me being in the second apron would almost certainly cost the Thunder meaningful opportunities to improve.
My bet is that Presti is years into knowing how he’ll avoid the second apron—in fact, he negotiated team options into six Thunder contracts this offseason, including for Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort, and Kenrich Williams. The most obvious scenario is that Dort goes to another team, while Hartenstein and maybe Williams come back on longer, cheaper deals, by which magic the team could shed the $20 million-plus it’ll take to get out of the second apron.
Dort’s absence might be valuable in developing Nikola Topić, who would have been very handy playmaking when Ajay Mitchell was injured. I’d be surprised if no players prove helpful out of Branden Carlsen, Thomas Sorber, and Brooks Barnhizer. In other words, the Thunder could be better. That could be the plan.
But David has an idea about a bolder move: “I would strongly consider trading J Dub. They did just fine without him in the playoffs, and you’re going to get a hell of a player for him.”
Stephen A. Smith seems to be ready to ship Chet Holmgren out of town as punishment for a bad series against the Spurs. But to David, one bad series is no way to judge a player who has won everywhere he has ever gone. He sent me a chart showing that over the first three playoff series, according to Estimated Plus-Minus, Chet was the third-best player in the playoffs. I asked David who he would trade Chet for, and he said Victor Wembanyama. Then he thought a bit and said Tyrese Maxey and a good young center. That’s all he could come up with.
Jalen Williams, though … makes more sense to Thorpe, because:
They’re an excellent team, even in the playoffs, when Jalen’s on the bench, largely because of Ajay Mitchell. (In postseason advanced stats, Mitchell is literally the best Thunder player. Yes, that’s a little unfair because he missed some of the hardest games. But the longer term trend is: Mitchell slays every plus/minus based stat.)
Jalen Williams has been injury prone.
And so the question becomes: what player could help the Thunder improve their fortunes against the Spurs?
A big wing.
Probably a power forward.
Young.
Can shoot and really defend.
Great, but who is that, and available?
