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Absolutely won’t happen as this is the most untouchable #1 pick ever
But just for giggles I wonder what presti would be willing to trade to move up and get the #1 pick in the draft if they get 4th in the lottery
2022 NBA Offseason Thread: Preseason kicks off; Things are fine in Los Angeles, Draymond beats the charges
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by nick.,
- Start date
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Absolutely won’t happen as this is the most untouchable #1 pick ever
But just for giggles I wonder what presti would be willing to trade to move up and get the #1 pick in the draft if they get 4th in the lottery
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Kp
Oden
Chet
Isaac
Zion
Oden
Chet
Isaac
Zion
MIKE LOWERY
formerly chuck finster
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That dead on looks like Matthew Dellavedova
Oh wait is that Lou Admundson?
Oh wait is that Lou Admundson?
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Some dudes make me legit wonder if they are fully human .
We will find out one day.
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No Mobley tonight
Have to wait to see their full lineup
Have to wait to see their full lineup
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Oklahoma City Thunder Mobile: Thunder in Greenwood
https://yi.nzc.am/cni0Wr
Thunder in Tulsa visited Greenwood and welcomed 24 students into Thunder Fellows whatever that is. Geez budget issues, we couldnt get more than 2 minutes of video? Sheesh
https://yi.nzc.am/cni0Wr
Thunder in Tulsa visited Greenwood and welcomed 24 students into Thunder Fellows whatever that is. Geez budget issues, we couldnt get more than 2 minutes of video? Sheesh
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That version of Mark Cuban was more exciting. Outside of the Big 3, fam would trade everybody every trade deadline then they’d all pull up to the game that same night and be in the owners suite or something and waive/intro to the crowd then theyd play tomorrowI'm old enough to remember whendatznasty was a Mavs fan.
Also, if Don Nelson played particularly Adrian Griffin and/or Greg Buckner (even Raja Bell or Johnny Newman) in 4th quarters that team would have won a chip somewhere. Them dudes would literally hold Kobe and VC and Tmac types to single digits going into the 4th then Nelson would go all offense Nash Nowitzki Finley and like NVE and Jamison or something depending on the era
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antidope
Supporter
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Gonna be out in LA for the Weekend on a work trip. Any dope must see Kobe Bryant Murals I should check out?
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will be waiting 1 -2 weeks
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You know when the news broke, the ex had to send that "Been thinking about you" text to kick the tires.
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You're right. Article should read "She's sticking with Ime... Trust me I tried "
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Somebody post Hollingers preview for the Thunder season where he says we have 2.5 starters
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Oklahoma City Thunder preview: Predictions and analysis for the 2022-23 NBA season
So, how long until this turns around?
Let’s start with the good news: The Thunder’s “Process 2.0” in the wake of the Paul George trade has reaped an unprecedented haul of draft picks. Even after nabbing three of the first dozen picks in the 2022 NBA Draft, Oklahoma City owns seven future first-round picks from other teams in addition to all of its own.
Sadly, its own picks will likely be the most valuable ones of that lot for a bit longer. After going 22-50 and 24-58 the past two seasons — overachieving their Pythagorean projections even to hit those win totals — Oklahoma City’s 2022-23 campaign doesn’t look like it will go much better.
The team’s tanking prize from last year’s draft, string bean shot-swatter Chet Holmgren, is already out for the season with a Lisfranc injury to his right foot. The Thunder have about 2.5 starting-caliber players on the rest of the roster (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey and Lu Dort), and the best of one of them is also injured to start the season. Beyond that, the roster is a slew of prospects who have mostly fared quite badly thus far in their young careers.
Giddey is the notable exception. His performance as the sixth pick in the draft last season was the biggest highlight, so to speak, in a year where the Thunder lost a game by 73 points, finished 29th in offense and all their other developmental players landed somewhere between “not very good” and “train wreck.” Legitimate questions remain about Giddey’s shooting and his defense, but his ability to fire one-handed bullets off the dribble at his size offers some alluring promise as a pick-and-roll creator.
Giddey was seemingly their first legitimate draft pick hit since the Steven Adams/Andre Roberson duo in 2013. A lot of disclaimers come with that statement, and we’ll discuss those in a minute.
But I can sit here and fire off takes about Tre Mann’s floater game, or I can launch directly into the one interesting conversation we can have regarding the Oklahoma City Thunder. So let’s cut to the chase: Can they actually make these draft picks pay off?
From that perspective, the most notable offseason acquisition for the Thunder wasn’t — checks notes — re-signing Mike Muscala. It was the decision to hire Vince Rozman from Philadelphia as “Vice President of Identification and Intelligence,” which is Thunderspeak for “draft guru.”
It’s a notable move because the Sixers have drafted quite well in recent years and the Thunder, er, not so much.
Under general manager Sam Presti, of course, the Thunder once upon a time had the greatest three-year draft run in NBA history. From 2007 to 2009 they landed Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Jeff Green and Serge Ibaka; three of them won MVPs, and all five are still in the league. And as recently as 2013, the Thunder walked out of draft day with two future starters in Adams and Roberson.
Since then, yikes. Giddey aside, the most successful pick in a Thunder uniform from 2014 on has been … Hamidou Diallo? Yes, the Thunder have been picking in some poor places, but one can argue they’ve been in a trip of continually reaching on low-skill wings and committing themselves via a draft promise eons before draft night.
Go through the other picks. Domantas Sabonis, yes, but he turned into an All-Star only after the Pacers rescued him from the Thunder’s near-ruinous attempt to turn him into a replacement-level stretch four. Cameron Payne eventually salvaged his career several years after he left the plains.
But in terms of value to the franchise, the best Oklahoma City “pick” in those nine years wasn’t a pick at all, it was signing Lu Dort to a two-way hours after he went undrafted in 2019. He ended up being a far better player than the one they selected in the first round (after trading down from taking either Brandon Clarke or Grant Williams).
Otherwise, the three words that best describe the Thunder’s drafts would be “Perry Jones Syndrome.” No other team has been more enthusiastic about drafting tall wings with theoretical tools and limited-to-nonexistent production. Jones, Terrance Ferguson, Darius Bazley, Josh Huestis and this year’s showcase example, Ousmane Dieng, certainly fall under that banner. Several second-rounders do, too.
One can argue the all-international 2020 draft of Aleksej Pokuševski, Maledon and Krejčí fits that description as well. Pokuševski and Maledon were two of the very worst players in the league in both 2020-21 and 2021-22 by most advanced stats, and Krejčí and Maledon are already gone. Pokuševski, at least, showed considerable improvement in 2021-22 after his tank commander rookie season and could still perhaps redeem this draft. He’s still only 20, and if he ever shoots a jumper with more than 1 degree of arc, he could be a handful.
(While we’re here … can we discuss the bizarre decision to bring over Maledon and Krejčí right away rather than let them develop overseas on another team’s dime? All it did was accelerate their time to free agency if they turned out to be any good and robbed the Thunder of the ability to use their rights in trades in the meantime. It also crowded the roster to the point that the Thunder had to cut another young player who was actually useful in Roby and were blocked from speculative “second draft” moves.)
The recent draft struggles are so puzzling because by virtually every other standard, the Thunder, under Presti, have been among the best-run teams in the league. That 2007-09 draft run yielded a dozen years of high-level contending, even if it didn’t yield a title. And the pivot into a rebuild from the Westbrook/George team, right before the house of cards was about to collapse, was a masterful stroke. They even squeezed in another playoff run around Chris Paul before they had to tear it all down.
Additionally, the undeniable counterpoint is that the Thunder have rarely had high picks and thus were in positions where taking moonshots on upside were perhaps more justified. Giddey and Holmgren are the first two picks they’ve had in the top 10 since picking Harden in 2009. Finally, one can also posit that the selection of Sabonis at No. 11 in 2016 wasn’t the problem, but rather the decision to maroon him at the 3-point line to watch the Russ Show. And hey, Diallo at No. 45 in 2018 ended up being a solid pick for that late.
The book is still being written on the 2021 haul; Mann, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Aaron Wiggins had their moments but mostly were gifted playing time by virtue of being on such an awful team. Their overall numbers were replacement-level caliber, but that’s hardly unusual or conclusive for a rookie. We’ll know a lot more a year from now.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to look at the 2022 draft and not see the ghosts of Perry Jones Syndrome resurface. (Rozman was not hired until after the draft.) The Thunder gave up three future firsts to draft Dieng at No. 11, even though they had the next pick. Dieng, a tall wing with meh athleticism who struggled mightily to produce in the far less challenging Australian NBL, obviously evokes ghosts of the Ferguson pick.
In the opposite direction, Jaylin Williams, their pick at No. 34, was perhaps the least impressive drafted player at NBA Summer League; it’s the second year in a row they picked an “anti-Ibaka” in the early second round: an athletically limited 6-foot-9 center who is neither a rim protector nor a floor spacer. (True believers will argue Robinson-Earl still has a chance to prove this statement wrong.)
And yet … the 2022 draft also held a ray of hope. Because at pick No. 12, the Thunder did an almost unbelievable thing by their standards, something called just taking the best player. Sure, Jalen Williams (no relation to Jaylin above) has some tools in terms of his length and vertical jump that likely attracted the Thunder, but … this is important … he also produced on the court. His promise wasn’t just theoretical; there is actual film of him being good at basketball.
Anyway, the Thunder have put the odds tremendously in their favor by accumulating so many draft picks. They don’t need to have some God-like three-year run like Presti had 15 years ago; they just need to hit on an All-Star to go with Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren (fingers crossed), and they’re likely on their way. However, this window is not indefinite. At some point the Thunder will be under pressure to attempt to win — probably next year, when they will have Holmgren, another high pick, max-ish cap room and three years of accumulated fatigue with getting their brains beat in every night.
Since I’ve hammered the Thunder’s struggles with athletic low-skill guys, an additional important note here is that Oklahoma City hired shooting guru Chip Engelland away from San Antonio this offseason. Engelland is one of the league’s renowned masters in this area, helping turn several Spurs with shaky shots into respectable marksmen, and it’s fair to say the Thunder have not shown this same capability over the last decade.
The additions of Rozman and Engelland are the two prongs of maximizing their draft capital — better player selection and better player development. The Thunder have seven recent first-rounders on their roster, another high lottery pick almost certainly coming in the 2023 draft, and four more firsts in 2024. The upside of this scenario is almost incalculable, but there’s also a risk the roster clogs up with half-good quasi-prospects who crowd out other moves and limit their maneuverability.
The Thunder’s challenge in this department is, frankly, much more interesting than anything that happens on the floor for them this season. The team will be terrible; only four players on the roster (Gilgeous-Alexander, Dort, Giddey and Kenrich Williams) project to be appreciably above replacement level. On a positive note, coach Mark Daigneault has shown an ability to squeeze out extra wins from this team, with last year’s No. 18 showing in defensive efficiency bordering on heroic given the roster. That likely will help make the final win-loss record just barely respectable, but it’s gonna be bad either way.
Prediction: 20-62, 15th in Western Conference
So, how long until this turns around?
Let’s start with the good news: The Thunder’s “Process 2.0” in the wake of the Paul George trade has reaped an unprecedented haul of draft picks. Even after nabbing three of the first dozen picks in the 2022 NBA Draft, Oklahoma City owns seven future first-round picks from other teams in addition to all of its own.
Sadly, its own picks will likely be the most valuable ones of that lot for a bit longer. After going 22-50 and 24-58 the past two seasons — overachieving their Pythagorean projections even to hit those win totals — Oklahoma City’s 2022-23 campaign doesn’t look like it will go much better.
The team’s tanking prize from last year’s draft, string bean shot-swatter Chet Holmgren, is already out for the season with a Lisfranc injury to his right foot. The Thunder have about 2.5 starting-caliber players on the rest of the roster (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey and Lu Dort), and the best of one of them is also injured to start the season. Beyond that, the roster is a slew of prospects who have mostly fared quite badly thus far in their young careers.
Giddey is the notable exception. His performance as the sixth pick in the draft last season was the biggest highlight, so to speak, in a year where the Thunder lost a game by 73 points, finished 29th in offense and all their other developmental players landed somewhere between “not very good” and “train wreck.” Legitimate questions remain about Giddey’s shooting and his defense, but his ability to fire one-handed bullets off the dribble at his size offers some alluring promise as a pick-and-roll creator.
Giddey was seemingly their first legitimate draft pick hit since the Steven Adams/Andre Roberson duo in 2013. A lot of disclaimers come with that statement, and we’ll discuss those in a minute.
But I can sit here and fire off takes about Tre Mann’s floater game, or I can launch directly into the one interesting conversation we can have regarding the Oklahoma City Thunder. So let’s cut to the chase: Can they actually make these draft picks pay off?
From that perspective, the most notable offseason acquisition for the Thunder wasn’t — checks notes — re-signing Mike Muscala. It was the decision to hire Vince Rozman from Philadelphia as “Vice President of Identification and Intelligence,” which is Thunderspeak for “draft guru.”
It’s a notable move because the Sixers have drafted quite well in recent years and the Thunder, er, not so much.
Under general manager Sam Presti, of course, the Thunder once upon a time had the greatest three-year draft run in NBA history. From 2007 to 2009 they landed Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Jeff Green and Serge Ibaka; three of them won MVPs, and all five are still in the league. And as recently as 2013, the Thunder walked out of draft day with two future starters in Adams and Roberson.
Since then, yikes. Giddey aside, the most successful pick in a Thunder uniform from 2014 on has been … Hamidou Diallo? Yes, the Thunder have been picking in some poor places, but one can argue they’ve been in a trip of continually reaching on low-skill wings and committing themselves via a draft promise eons before draft night.
Go through the other picks. Domantas Sabonis, yes, but he turned into an All-Star only after the Pacers rescued him from the Thunder’s near-ruinous attempt to turn him into a replacement-level stretch four. Cameron Payne eventually salvaged his career several years after he left the plains.
But in terms of value to the franchise, the best Oklahoma City “pick” in those nine years wasn’t a pick at all, it was signing Lu Dort to a two-way hours after he went undrafted in 2019. He ended up being a far better player than the one they selected in the first round (after trading down from taking either Brandon Clarke or Grant Williams).
Otherwise, the three words that best describe the Thunder’s drafts would be “Perry Jones Syndrome.” No other team has been more enthusiastic about drafting tall wings with theoretical tools and limited-to-nonexistent production. Jones, Terrance Ferguson, Darius Bazley, Josh Huestis and this year’s showcase example, Ousmane Dieng, certainly fall under that banner. Several second-rounders do, too.
One can argue the all-international 2020 draft of Aleksej Pokuševski, Maledon and Krejčí fits that description as well. Pokuševski and Maledon were two of the very worst players in the league in both 2020-21 and 2021-22 by most advanced stats, and Krejčí and Maledon are already gone. Pokuševski, at least, showed considerable improvement in 2021-22 after his tank commander rookie season and could still perhaps redeem this draft. He’s still only 20, and if he ever shoots a jumper with more than 1 degree of arc, he could be a handful.
(While we’re here … can we discuss the bizarre decision to bring over Maledon and Krejčí right away rather than let them develop overseas on another team’s dime? All it did was accelerate their time to free agency if they turned out to be any good and robbed the Thunder of the ability to use their rights in trades in the meantime. It also crowded the roster to the point that the Thunder had to cut another young player who was actually useful in Roby and were blocked from speculative “second draft” moves.)
The recent draft struggles are so puzzling because by virtually every other standard, the Thunder, under Presti, have been among the best-run teams in the league. That 2007-09 draft run yielded a dozen years of high-level contending, even if it didn’t yield a title. And the pivot into a rebuild from the Westbrook/George team, right before the house of cards was about to collapse, was a masterful stroke. They even squeezed in another playoff run around Chris Paul before they had to tear it all down.
Additionally, the undeniable counterpoint is that the Thunder have rarely had high picks and thus were in positions where taking moonshots on upside were perhaps more justified. Giddey and Holmgren are the first two picks they’ve had in the top 10 since picking Harden in 2009. Finally, one can also posit that the selection of Sabonis at No. 11 in 2016 wasn’t the problem, but rather the decision to maroon him at the 3-point line to watch the Russ Show. And hey, Diallo at No. 45 in 2018 ended up being a solid pick for that late.
The book is still being written on the 2021 haul; Mann, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Aaron Wiggins had their moments but mostly were gifted playing time by virtue of being on such an awful team. Their overall numbers were replacement-level caliber, but that’s hardly unusual or conclusive for a rookie. We’ll know a lot more a year from now.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to look at the 2022 draft and not see the ghosts of Perry Jones Syndrome resurface. (Rozman was not hired until after the draft.) The Thunder gave up three future firsts to draft Dieng at No. 11, even though they had the next pick. Dieng, a tall wing with meh athleticism who struggled mightily to produce in the far less challenging Australian NBL, obviously evokes ghosts of the Ferguson pick.
In the opposite direction, Jaylin Williams, their pick at No. 34, was perhaps the least impressive drafted player at NBA Summer League; it’s the second year in a row they picked an “anti-Ibaka” in the early second round: an athletically limited 6-foot-9 center who is neither a rim protector nor a floor spacer. (True believers will argue Robinson-Earl still has a chance to prove this statement wrong.)
And yet … the 2022 draft also held a ray of hope. Because at pick No. 12, the Thunder did an almost unbelievable thing by their standards, something called just taking the best player. Sure, Jalen Williams (no relation to Jaylin above) has some tools in terms of his length and vertical jump that likely attracted the Thunder, but … this is important … he also produced on the court. His promise wasn’t just theoretical; there is actual film of him being good at basketball.
Anyway, the Thunder have put the odds tremendously in their favor by accumulating so many draft picks. They don’t need to have some God-like three-year run like Presti had 15 years ago; they just need to hit on an All-Star to go with Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren (fingers crossed), and they’re likely on their way. However, this window is not indefinite. At some point the Thunder will be under pressure to attempt to win — probably next year, when they will have Holmgren, another high pick, max-ish cap room and three years of accumulated fatigue with getting their brains beat in every night.
Since I’ve hammered the Thunder’s struggles with athletic low-skill guys, an additional important note here is that Oklahoma City hired shooting guru Chip Engelland away from San Antonio this offseason. Engelland is one of the league’s renowned masters in this area, helping turn several Spurs with shaky shots into respectable marksmen, and it’s fair to say the Thunder have not shown this same capability over the last decade.
The additions of Rozman and Engelland are the two prongs of maximizing their draft capital — better player selection and better player development. The Thunder have seven recent first-rounders on their roster, another high lottery pick almost certainly coming in the 2023 draft, and four more firsts in 2024. The upside of this scenario is almost incalculable, but there’s also a risk the roster clogs up with half-good quasi-prospects who crowd out other moves and limit their maneuverability.
The Thunder’s challenge in this department is, frankly, much more interesting than anything that happens on the floor for them this season. The team will be terrible; only four players on the roster (Gilgeous-Alexander, Dort, Giddey and Kenrich Williams) project to be appreciably above replacement level. On a positive note, coach Mark Daigneault has shown an ability to squeeze out extra wins from this team, with last year’s No. 18 showing in defensive efficiency bordering on heroic given the roster. That likely will help make the final win-loss record just barely respectable, but it’s gonna be bad either way.
Prediction: 20-62, 15th in Western Conference
Mister Meaner
formerly super producer j
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Jeremy Lin talk in 2022? Media running out of jokes for yr current state of affairs in NYC.
He had a good run. He should be attending pta meetings now.
He had a good run. He should be attending pta meetings now.
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Wow
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Tweet already gone?
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The best one I’ve seen is in Lil Tokyo. Fire
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