OKC Thunder: 3 things we wish happened at this year’s trade deadline

“What we wish happened” scenario No. 3) Landing a second-chance player

As we’ve already alluded to, a rebuilding team’s best friend is draft capital and, by all accounts, the OKC Thunder are flush with good buddies.

However, a close second in the running for “most important commodity” for a franchise in this specific phase is young talent and, though Sam Presti already has a ton of this in his arsenal, it never hurts to bring on more.

Seeing that the OKC Thunder have 34 picks over the next seven seasons, it’s safe to say they’re going to have to make some future trades involving said capital just to trim their projected roster size down to 15 players, for this is typically the max number in which you can have on a respective team — 34 picks equals 34 incoming players and, of course, this would not be allowed to fly.

Because of this, leading up to the deadline we at TI pondered on the idea of the front office dealing away some lesser use picks (say their 2026 and 2027 second-round picks) for young players who have not managed to live up to their potential when initially coming into the league.

With the track record OKC’s coaching staff has with developing their youth, we believed bringing on second-chance players in need of a fresh start on the low could have been a smart move for the team to consider.

In the past, we went about naming several players who fit this description, such as Kevin Knox, Romeo Langford, Mo Bamba, and several others.

Somewhat to our disappointment, however, these types of moves were not made and we are still in possession of all of our selections through 2027.

Champaign problems? Of course!

Still, it would have been interesting to see the OKC Thunder take on more projects to try and mold moving forward.