OKC Thunder: 3 trades to acquire more draft picks

OKC Thunder – The Draft Pick Hunter, Deal No. 3:   Horford returns to Celtics

No use reinventing the wheel when my fellow cohort already did the heavy lifting. A favorite pastime of Mark Nilon and I are musing over the potential trades the Thunder can pull off to add to the haul in place.

We get giddy thinking of the future and because Mark Daigneault has been so successful at getting the best out of players it’s a fun exercise to consider who could resurrect their career in OKC.

In this case, it would be more a matter of a player who excelled in a prior situation, stumbled in a second scenario, and then reminded the masses of his prowess in OKC.

Clearly, that player is Al Horford who was never the right fit beside Joel Embiid in Philly. Horford gained his reputation in Atlanta on a perennial playoff team. The Hawks never reached their goal thanks in large part to someone named LeBron.

In his next stop with the Celtics, he became known as “the Embiid stopper” but at the end of his contract, Danny Ainge wasted too much time addressing the Kyrie Irving — Kemba Walker situation, and by the time the dust settled Al had accepted the deal with the 76ers.

"Since Al Horford opted to part ways with the Boston Celtics two offseasons ago, they’ve struggled mightily to find a quality replacement within their rotation. Experiments with Enes Kanter, Daniel Theis, and Tristan Thompson have all seemingly failed and these failures have been a big reason as to why they’ve fallen so far from their preseason expectations of being legitimate championship contenders."

As they say sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. In this case, perhaps the more fitting phrase is the big man who fits your system would be a wiser move than searching to find someone who does. As Mark Nilon pointed out, Ainge has tried numerous big men to fix the problem and none have meshed with the young Celts like Horford did.

"He’d easily be an upgrade to what they have now down low, and would a relatively cheaper alternative to the other targets they’re rumored to be interested in pursuing (Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon, John Collins, etc."

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Ainge would get to use that TPE he acquired in the Gordon Hayward deal (which we know he can’t bear to lose) and figure things out moving forward regarding the rest of Horford’s contract.

Sure, it’s pricey, but they aren’t a team who can afford to waste the talents or timelines of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown searching madly to fill a gap.

Boston got out to a hot 8-3 season start but since then has underachieved amassing a 13-19 record. The Celts struggle on the road (8-15) and are 6-13 against the current playoff seeds.

For a team who got to the Eastern Conference Finals in three of the past four seasons falling short of that benchmark (or exceeding it) simply isn’t going to fly in Beantown.

As for the Thunder, Sam Presti would gladly add another first-round draft pick to the coffers for this season’s fully loaded class. And, if it doesn’t convey he’ll have two future second-round draft picks to work with.