As the Oklahoma City Thunder continue to impress, we explore whether they should be buyers or sellers at the NBA Trade Deadline
Somewhat surprisingly, the Oklahoma City Thunder has been good this year. Like a whole lot better than anyone thought they would be. When the Thunder traded their two leading scorers and MVP caliber superstars, everyone (including myself) thought that was the end of the Thunder who contend and make the playoffs and the beginning of the Thunder who roll the dice on any young player they can find.
That is surely not the case.
The Thunder are firmly 7th in the West and their 22-16 record puts them five games ahead of the Spurs, who fill the 8th seed. On the surface, this is great news for the Thunder because it gives them great odds at the playoffs, even for the early season.
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This is even more impressive considering how close their .568 win percentage is to the .598 they had last year. In fact, the past three years for the Thunder have relatively the same record, which makes this year’s Thunder’s record even more impressive.
While they are incrementally worse than before, they have acquired a few draft picks from parting with their superstars. By that, I mean a whopping seven first-rounders and two second-rounders. Seriously, this is an insane amount of picks. The Thunder have been overwhelmingly branded as “sellers” for the trade deadline, but is that really in the best interest of the team?
You can only have so many players on a roster and adding more picks does not seem like a logical way for the Thunder to improve drastically. Barring any changes, the Thunder will be making 12 draft selections in the next four years. That is an entire team of players! For those guys to come in, other players need to move out. I don’t think the Thunder should be moving any of their key players without upgrading their current talent.
The Thunder definitely needs to trim their salary, but they shouldn’t lose talent in the process. I think the Thunder would be able to acquire Andre Drummond and Markief Morris from the Pistons. To do this, they would have to part with Steven Adams and either Hamidou Diallo or Terrance Ferguson and one or two of their first-rounders depending on who they choose to part with. I would like to see Oklahoma City keep Diallo, but he is replaceable with the significant draft capital they would have left.
Sam Presti could work on a smaller deal to lower the team salary, hopefully, if Andre Roberson proves he is healthy and can play in the next month a contending team could be interested in him. If OKC is giving up a first-rounder to get Drummond I would like for them to be able to get the deal done without any more than a second, but if Roberson gets back on the court as good as he was before there are plenty of teams who would love to have him.
The Thunder are in a very good place right now. Keeping their core or trading up are viable solutions for them to continue to grow and get better as a team, but selling their players for more draft capital is not the answer. They have so much to work with in the draft in the next few years they are all but guaranteed to land a star; I’m looking forward to seeing who it will be.