The Oklahoma City Thunder may ultimately heed increasingly frequent calls to make a consolidation trade. With training camp set to tipoff next week, though, Sam Presti seems much more interested in letting his team's incredibly promising young core develop and evolve together than breaking it up to chase more wins in 2023-24.
“You can't buy the paint for your house that you haven't bought yet,” the Thunder's longtime general manager said on Wednesday, per Justin Martinez of The Oklahoman. “You don't know wherethe house is. … You don't know what style it is. You don't know how much paint you'll need. We don't really know what we have right now.”
The Thunder were one of the most pleasant surprises in the league last season, finishing 40-42 and nearly advancing past the play-in tournament behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's rise to full-fledged superstardom and stellar contributions from fellow franchise building blocks Josh Giddey and Jalen Williams. That level of success was especially surprising given the season-long absence of Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 overall pick of last year's draft whose NBA debut was delayed due to a broken foot.
There's no doubt Presti would be more inclined to make a win-now trade had Holmgren been able to play last season, affording he and coach Mark Daigneault sustained on-court evidence of how Oklahoma City's wealth of young talent fits together. But even a full season's worth of evaluation may not be enough for the Thunder's decision-making brass to glean any concrete conclusions about how to best build around Gilgeous-Alexander going forward.
The notoriously lithe Holmgren is still just 21, a long way from a physical prime that will inform his long-term position. What if Giddey builds on the strides he took in 2022-23 to become a reliable long-range shooter down the line? It'd be foolish to put any cap on Williams' potential after his meteoric rise from surprise late lottery pick to Rookie of the Year runner-up. Ousmane Dieng is still an ultra-intriguing ball of basketball clay, and Oklahoma City probably isn't quite ready to give up on Aleksej Pokusevski. Like Holmgren, fellow rookie Cason Wallace is an NBA mystery.
The only mistake the Thunder can make right now is rushing their ongoing rise toward the top of the league. Time is still on their side, too. Gilgeous-Alexander won't be eligible for a super-max extension until the conclusion of 2025-26. Giddy is locked in for at least the next two seasons, with extension eligibility and restricted free agency awaiting. Williams and Holmgren won't get expensive before 2026-27.
There's just no justification for Oklahoma City moving with the urgency that prompts a consolidation trade for a superstar, burgeoning intrigue on the matter be damned.
“I don't think you can make a rational case for it now,” Presti said. “Perhaps at some point when we have a little more information, the team has demonstrated its capability and played in high-performing games and we see what our limitations are, potentially.
“But I don't know that there's a lot of good rational thinking behind that other than impulse and following content creation. That is just part of the world that we live in.”
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