S.I. ranks the OKC Thunder as 5th most desperate tanking team

The end of the 2020-21 season is rapidly approaching as the OKC Thunder find themselves with a mere 17 games left on the docket.

Coming into the year, the expectation for the franchise was that they would be taking a sharper turn towards a full-out rebuild in an effort to develop their young talents found on the roster and, in turn, start planning for the future.

While the first half of the season was filled with a surprising amount of success, boasting a record of 15-21 and constantly finding themselves in and out of the play-in tournament picture heading into the All-Star break, since their return to action the team has dropped 14 of 19 and are currently in the midst of an eight-game losing streak.

This, coupled with a bevy of different decisions made by Mark Daigneault over the past several weeks, has TI completely convinced that Oklahoma City has officially invested in the tank and is now looking to lock up a top-tier pick in this coming draft.

The OKC Thunder are viewed as the 5th most desperate tanking franchise

Like most years, there are multiple teams finding themselves in the race to the bottom of the league’s food chain, with hopes of landing the No. 1 overall selection which, this year, is likely to be Oklahoma State standout point guard, Cade Cunningham.

Though it appears as though the hard work is done for the OKC Thunder in regard to their rebuild, as they already have a franchise player in place is third-year guard, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, there are some still under the impression that the front office has quite a bit of pressure to execute perfectly over these next few years.

This year, in specific, the folks at Sports Illustrated (subscription required) are under the impression that Sam Presti and co. should be desperate to land a high-end lottery pick. In fact, writer Karim Noorani would go as far as to say they should be ranked fifth in some sort of desperation category amongst other tanking teams:

"Even though OKC is in no bind for future draft capital, they still have a budding All-Star in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is ready to contribute to a winning team. The point guard will enter the final year of his rookie contract next season and will in all likelihood command a max offer sheet from the Thunder to retain him.If they intend to build around Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City is only guaranteed a five- to six-year window before he can hit unrestricted free agency. This puts at least a mild amount of pressure on the Thunder to quickly assemble a good young core around SGA so they can maximize their window with him and increase the chances he sticks around for the long haul."

As we already mentioned, the hard part of finding a franchise building block is seemingly out of the way for OKC. However, keeping him happy moving forward should ultimately be the team’s next goal.

A way to go about this is by surrounding SGA with as many high-quality talents as possible, and the 2021 NBA Draft seems to be a prime opportunity to get the ball rolling.