Small Ball: Meet the OKC Thunder Summer League roster
By Rylan Stiles
The OKC Thunder are set to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada to take part in the NBA Summer League. An event that was canceled a year ago, but is critical for player development.
The Oklahoma City Thunder Summer League roster has a few interesting wrinkles, including their sixth overall pick being the tallest player on the team.
The OKC Thunder announce their Summer League roster
After a year off due to the pandemic, the NBA Summer League is back, which is great for the Thunder organization.
Oklahoma City has had great success developing players in the summer league. Deonte Burton (for better or worse), Lu Dort, Hamidou Diallo, and others truly raised their status with the event.
Mark Daigneault, Sam Presti, as well as everyone else around the game of basketball touched on how much the 2020 NBA Draft class missed this important opportunity.
Josh Giddey, Tre Mann, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, and Aaron Wiggins are afforded a luxury that Aleksej Pokusevski and Theo Maledon were not a year ago.
Grant Gibbs, the OKC Blue coach who is acting as the Thunder summer league coach, will get to initiate this crop of rookies into the NBA game over the next two weeks.
Theo Maledon, who is now entering his second NBA season and led the team in minutes last season, is will his moment in the Vegas heat this month.
However, Aleksej Pokusevski will miss this year’s summer event due to Sam Presti putting him on a “different plan” this summer.
Another player absent from the OKC Thunder roster is Vit Krejci, who the team is going to bring over to the NBA this season. However, he is still recovering from an ACL injury.
After ramping up practice in July, eventually, he will be cleared for five-on-five action in August. The issue is, we are still just seven days into the month.
Now, let’s meet the roster starting with the guards.