Oklahoma City Thunder: Why OKC’s future is on thin ice

After being bounced out of the first round for the third year in a row, in the Russell Westbrook era, Sam Presti will need to reconsider the Oklahoma City Thunder’s roster construction

On April 29th, during Oklahoma City Thunder‘s end of the season press conference, Sam Presti addressed a reporter’s question regarding Russell Westbrook’s performance this year and the criticism surrounding his questionable media approach.

Presti responded by saying:

"“Russell Westbrook has been here 11 years. The reason there’s so many people in the room and people watching is that Russell Westbrook has helped us achieve a certain level. With all that being said, he’s not perfect, none of us are. I’m not going to let 11 years of his contributions and performance be completely overshadowed by a couple of pretty tough months. As the leader of the team and face of the franchise, we’ll have those conversations. Would we prefer he handled a few things differently? Yeah, we’ve talked about that. He made an adjustment to that particular approach and I think that’s a sign of growth.”"

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From a public standpoint, Presti’s comments demonstrated his loyalty and the amount of respect he has towards Westbrook, which any player would be crazy not to admire from their owner/boss.

In those 11 years, there have been plenty of successful seasons in Oklahoma City. There was a Finals appearance in 2012, followed by a couple of unfortunate injury-riddled seasons along the way.

In fact, after witnessing the 2012 Heat and Thunder series – centered around Kevin Durant and LeBron James attempting to outduel one another – many around the league believed the player matchup could become the modernized Bird and Magic rivalry of this generation, with each star player’s team perennially representing their conference and consecutively meeting one another in the NBA finals.

But time flies and those days are long gone.

It’s now 2019 and moving forward, it’s not crazy to predict that the mutual respect Presti and Westbrook have for one another will eventually transform into a singular one – at least for a while – following a potential blockbuster trade and given Westbrook’s “chip on my shoulder” personality.

Looking back at what has led to OKC’s current predicament, however, the first domino effect was arguably when Durant spurned them for the Warriors in the summer of 2016.

After Durant’s departure, the following season, Westbrook not only became the face of the franchise for the Thunder, but the NBA community couldn’t help but feel sympathy towards him in light of his rejection.

For the 2016-17 season, Westbrook played under a contract that was set to expire the following year, averaged a triple-double (the first player to average it for an entire season since Oscar Robertson), and led the Thunder to the 6th seed, only to lose to the Rockets in five games.

Given how clear it was on how little help Westbrook had offensively, at the time, the biggest fear out of the OKC was Westbrook leaving them just like Durant had done the summer before. With James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Westbrook, and Durant gone, the Thunder were in danger of becoming a laughing-stock that would be forced to rebuild their roster from scratch.

Yet, Presti immediately took matters into his own hands and strategically traded for a disgruntled Paul George in Indiana, and the aging Knicks star, Carmelo Anthony (who was perceived to still be an all-star caliber player and had averaged 22 points the season before).

These moves convinced Westbrook that OKC was committed to constructing a winning team around him, so both parties eventually agreed to restructure his contract and extend him to the largest contract in NBA history with a five-year, $205 million deal, which was considered a risky but necessary move at the time.

The previous season, given his promising potential, Presti had also chosen to sign Steven Adams to a four-year, $100 million extension.

But the lucrative contracts didn’t stop there.

Upon deciding to stay in OKC, Paul George resigned to a four-year, $137 million max contract, which also made perfect sense at the time.

Not only would refusing George’s contract demands have sent the wrong message to Westbrook, but they also would have given away some of their core pieces for simply a rental; if you choose to roll the dice and give up assets to get one of the best two-way players in the league, you try your best to re-sign him and not let him walk for nothing in return.

While using hindsight to nitpick is never fair i.e., everyone tries to make the best decision at the moment without having any knowledge of the future, these three enormous contracts are part of the reason why the Thunder have a $142.17M payroll and a luxury tax bill of $58.11M.

In this year’s playoffs, it’s obvious that besides depth, OKC’s most glaring weakness is a lack of shooting: since George was their best shooter and Abrines was no longer on the team, they simply overplayed George and ran him off the 3-point line, while daring everyone else to beat them.

Presti will attempt to address this issue in the offseason, but since they are so deep in the luxury tax, any free agent acquisition will only keep adding onto their tax bill.

And paying a luxury tax bill is only worth it for the Golden State Warriors: a team that is competing for championships every year (interestingly enough, the Warriors haven’t dealt with cap issues until recently since Curry was on a cheap deal for so long, due to his chronic ankle problems).

In all likelihood, OKC will probably rely on the draft, the G-league, and overseas to find more shooting and depth. If you look at this year, for example, they have two second-round draft picks, and the following year they have three top 20 protected first-round picks (Magic and 76ers) and a second-round pick that is top 55 protected by the Bulls.

Presti and his scouts have normally been pretty good at drafting, so there is a good chance OKC will hit on some of those picks.

However, if they are bounced out of the first-round (a second-round exit would also be disappointing) next season, major roster changes may occur since their performance would only further exemplify just how stuck the Thunder really are; their team is in the middle, which is one of the worse places to be in sports: they’re not good enough to contend, but also not bad enough to lose and try to build through the draft with high picks.

OKC’s situation is very similar to what Washington is experiencing right now and what the Bulls went through a few years ago.

After being in danger of becoming a non-playoff team to go into the luxury tax, in an endeavor to escape their financial crisis, the Wizards front office’s first chess move was to trade Jodie Meeks to the Bucks.

At the trade deadline, they continued their work by moving Markieff Morris to the Pelicans and trading away Otto Porter Jr. to the Bulls in return for two players who will likely not be a part of their plans moving forward, in Portis (restricted free agent) and Parker (whose 1-year team option they’ll likely decline this summer since he would make $20 million and contradict the Porter trade).

Though the Wizards may have taken a few steps in the right direction, their cap situation and roster construction will remain difficult to fully resolve: they extended Wall to a four-year,$170 million deal, in the summer of 2017, who ruptured his left Achilles’ tendon and will likely be out all of next season, will need to decide if they want to match any of the Portis offer sheets during the offseason, and their most valuable trade asset on the open market is Bradley Beal (there’s more risk with Wall given his injury concerns), whom Leonsis has openly admitted that he is against trading.

The Bulls on the other hand, at one point, lost to the Boston Celtics in the first round in 2017 and had arguably a top 15 to 20 player in Jimmy Butler. The ideal scenario would have been to keep Butler and add stars next to him, but the question was always how? They didn’t have the cap flexibility, were going to keep drafting in the late first and second round, had to eventually sign Butler to the supermax at the age of 30 to prevent him from walking in free agency (likely putting them in the luxury tax like OKC), and their core players had very little trade value, due to their inconsistencies.

During this period, the only player on their roster who had any significant trade value and could command various assets was Jimmy Butler, so they chose to trade him to Minnesota and added three young prospects (Markkanen, Lavine, Dunn) to build around.

It’s not crazy to think OKC may need to consider a similar approach at some point (large salary dump or rebuild).

Now, this is not to say that Westbrook and George aren’t better players than anyone on those two rosters, because they are; George was an MVP candidate this season, while Westbrook will likely become a first ballot Hall of Famer. But in terms of all three teams suffering from a lack of flexibility to upgrade their roster, it’s almost identical.

Going into the 2019-20 season, Westbrook will be 31 (34 when his contract expires) and his athleticism will only continue to decline.

Sure, he’s box office and OKC fans love him for being the star that stayed, but that just hasn’t translated to success in the postseason.

If he stays, the triple-double averages will probably continue and it’ll help his legacy down the road, but that’s not going to prevent defenses from going under the pick-and-roll on him and clogging the paint come playoff time.

As a result, Westbrook might become their Jimmy Butler-like asset.

Oddly enough, even though Westbrook’s value might be high right now, you are likely not going to get a superstar or a star in return for any potential trade package. Probably a few decent role players and draft picks (Unless a star randomly demands a trade)

Only with Westbrook gone, that would make Paul George your number one option now.

George is a substantially better player now than he was in Indiana, but one can’t help but wonder if a Paul George led team will be enough to dethrone any of the contending teams in the West and lead you to a title. And would the young pieces OKC receives in a potential Westbrook deal align with George’s age and career goals?

If Presti chose to commit to a full rebuild, the combination of both George and Westbrook – rather than parting ways with only one player – could command even greater assets and have players on their roster follow similar age timelines.

On the contrary, if OKC were to become adamant on keeping the Westbrook and George duo together, Adams might be the only other trade option. Although he’s valuable to their success, getting rid of his salary could resolve some of their personnel issues.

And this is what can make it so frustrating not only for the front office but for OKC fans as well: the Thunder have the two stars, which is the hardest thing to get in the NBA, but they can’t find the correct supporting cast.

Rebuilding is hard and is not fun basketball to watch. It’s not enjoyable for the fans or the front offices that consider themselves competitive and hate losing, but in the end, it all simply comes down to what the goal is. If it’s consistent playoff berths and just trying to give it their best shot every year, then they are okay where they are right now and there is nothing wrong with that. Plenty of teams do it.

And someone as smart as Presti can always get very creative and figure something out.

But if your goal is to have a great chance of winning a championship then you need elite players. i.e., Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, LeBron James. And how do you get them? Through trade, free agency, and the draft. Lack of cap space prevents the first two options for OKC so that only leaves the draft.

The interesting thing about the OKC fans is that they never experienced a full rebuild; Sonic fans did but not them. Instead, upon the team moving to Oklahoma City, they inherited Durant, experienced only one losing season, and had Westbrook, Harden, and Ibaka come on the board subsequently after. The only suffering they have experienced thus far has been witnessing Durant depart for the Warriors via free agency.

Presti is going to have to pick a direction soon and both paths have a huge risk of not being very pretty.