The next OKC Thunder contention window: Into the great wide open

Analyzing when the OKC Thunder next window of contention should be given the age of their core and timing of future draft picks.

In Tom Petty’s 1991 hit “Into the Great Wide Open”, he sings about a man who moves to a new town and starts a brand new life from scratch. Literally, everything is possible. With the season over, Billy Donovan gone, and Chris Paul having more or less said his goodbyes to the city, OKC Thunder fans find themselves feeling a little like the character in Petty’s song.

With lines like “the future was wide open” and “the sky was the limit.” Unlike Petty’s protagonist, though, who is “a rebel without a clue,” the Thunder has a quiet, calculating professional at the controls. The Thunder have Sam Presti.

When will the OKC Thunder contend for a championship again?

Sam is the man with the plan, but what exactly that plan is, nobody knows. When does the Thunder want to be good again? When will the team from the plains compete for a title?

OKC is basically in the perfect starting place for a rebuild. Some safe assumptions can be made about what the roster will look like next season. Chris Paul and Dennis Schröder will almost certainly be traded, and Danilo Gallinari will walk in free agency.

The OKC Thunder have team options on Abdel Nader, Hamidou Diallo, and Deonte Burton. Nader and Burton are on the wrong side of 25 to be considered prospects, and they are using up valuable roster spots. They are as good as gone. Diallo had an up-and-down sophomore season and was awful in the playoffs, but he’s cheap, young, and athletic. He will stay.

If those assumptions hold true, the Thunder has only $45 million in salary committed next season, less than half the projected cap, and Steven Adams alone commands half of the Thunder’s payroll. His contract is up by the start of the 2021-22 season, where the Thunder have zero players on fully guaranteed, committed contracts.

To be clear, the only players under contract two seasons from now are either on team options (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Darius Bazley) or non-guaranteed deals (Isaiah Roby, Luguentz Dort). That is a lot of flexibility.

Add to that the 13 first-round picks spread for the Thunder out over the next seven drafts, and the timeline is clear as mud. With the oldest of the Thunder’s new young core being only 22, there’s no telling how good they can be individually or jointly. And the picks, while great, could fall anywhere.

How to build a plan backward

Since the OKC Thunder goal is to win a championship, all plans should start from there and work backward, like solving a maze from the end. In order to win NBA Champions, a team needs one of the ten or so best players in the league, and that player usually needs to be in his prime, roughly defined as 25-30, when the player has gained real experience but hasn’t lost much athleticism.

If Presti thinks that a player is on the roster, then the clock is ticking. As young as Gilgeous-Alexander is, he should be entering his prime in just a few seasons. In the words of Yogi Berra, “it gets late early.” Even if the Thunder doesn’t expect SGA to be the best player on a championship team, he’ll certainly be one of the best two or three, and whoever that best player is will need to be in his prime before SGA ages out of his.

Fortunately for the Thunder, the timing should work out. At the start of the 2023-24 season, SGA will be 26, Dort 25, and Bazley 24, and OKC will have had five first-round picks and three second-round picks, not to mention whatever assets, whether picks or players, the Thunder get back in deals for Paul and Schröder.

Those five first-round picks include the Thunder’s own picks in 2021, 2022, and 2023, all of which are likely to be in the lottery. Plus a Nuggets first-rounder this year, the Heat’s pick in 2021 (which will probably be late in the first round), and the right to swap with the Rockets in 2021 and the Clippers in 2023. Since the Thunder’s own pick is likely to be in the lottery in 2023, exercising that swap would mean that the Clippers pick is pretty high.

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This likely means three chances at the lottery before the Thunder’s young trio enters its prime, which is not bad at all. The chances of landing another Westbrook, Durant, or Harden is low, but the chances of landing a player as good as SGA or better is a real possibility.

And although the Thunder will not be playoff contenders next season, they will get better as this young core builds skills and experience.

Given four years of growth, Dort, Bazley, and SGA may be too good to continue tanking, and the fans will be itching.

Also, the Thunder juiciest draft assets after this point mostly come from other teams. OKC will essentially be drafting for the Clippers from 2022 through 2026, alternating between unprotected firsts and pick swaps, so the Thunder won’t need to lose in order to have a chance at picking in the lottery.

To me, the signs point toward Presti throttling down the tank train in 2023 or 2024. Whether the Thunder will be good enough to contend depends entirely on how well he drafts and trades. But Presti has a good track record for both. If the sky is the limit, he is the man to take us there.