What Gabriel Deck’s departure means for OKC Thunder

The OKC Thunder entered the NBA offseason with a roster crunch and a few ways to figure it out. One surprising avenue to begin chipping away at the roster was seeing forward Gabriel Deck head back overseas to the Euro-League.

With reports coming out about Gabriel Deck heading overseas to return to the euro-leagues, it opens up a few questions for the roster.

How does Deck’s departure impact the OKC Thunder?

The Oklahoma City Thunder inked Gabriel Deck to a three-year partially guaranteed deal worth up to 11-million dollars in April, departing his Real Madrid team.

The 26-year-old was challenged with a long quarantine period due to the NBA’s COVID-19 policy and only played in ten games during the 2020-21 season.

It would be a bit odd to see the Oklahoma City organization not bring back Deck, guaranteeing at least this year of his NBA pact, after all the team and Deck went through to get him ready to play in the association this past season.

After waving Kemba Walker, the easy to waive Charlie Brown Jr. who is on a totally non-guaranteed agreement, there seemed to be over avenues to clear up roster spots for an Oklahoma City organization that to this point has not done a ton of adding outside of the four rookies. One of whom is inked to a two-way deal.

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If the reports are true, it would also be a safe assumption that the rest of the league did not value Deck even after his solid Olympic contributions to team Argentina.

For the Thunder, they rid an old-school style player who was not a perfect fit for their timeline age-wise either. Adding Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, guaranteeing Isaiah Roby’s deal, keeping around Kenrich Williams, plus young pieces like Darius Bazley the power forward rotation is a bit full. Gabriel Deck would have just added to the jumbled rotation.

While just rumors right now, if Deck true does return to the Euro-Leagues, it opens up a lot more minutes for the Villanova product Robinson-Earl.