What if the OKC Thunder land Victor Wembanyama after the NBA Draft Lottery?

The 2023 NBA Draft cycle is fully upon us as the NBA Offseason tipped off a week ago for the Oklahoma City Thunder. This starts our annual NBA Draft prospect profile series, where we post profiles for each prospect in the NBA Draft to decide how they fit with the OKC Thunder and determine their strengths and weaknesses. Let’s have some day-one fun with Victor Wembanyama.

Look, I know, there is only a 1.7 percent chance that the Oklahoma City Thunder leap up on NBA Draft Lottery Day to the number one selection to be able to name Victor Wembanyama on Draft Day, but there is still a chance! So let’s just dream for a bit and ease our way into the offseason.

After all, since the flattened Lottery odds, the league has seen a team leap into the top four every year. So why not the Oklahoma City Thunder?

What if the OKC Thunder saw absurd luck to leap to the top pick and land Victor Wembanyama?

“Generational,” “Never before seen,” and “game-changing” are all surface-level praise for Victor Wembanyama throughout this NBA Draft process. Many around the NBA predicted before the year this would be a “tank race” of a season the likes of which we have never seen across the association.

Despite some excuses to do so, that never happened. Instead, the Utah Jazz stayed in it until the final few weeks and only got up to the ninth-best lottery odds; the OKC Thunder made the NBA postseason, the Wizards and Pacers were middling, while Paolo Banchero improved the Magic.

That left the usual suspects at the bottom: Detroit, Houston, San Antonio (who openly admitted to tanking before the year), Charlotte, and Portland with the top-five odds at landing Victor Wembanyama.

While it was surprising not to see many teams pack it in as soon as possible on the season–maybe Adam Silver’s preseason memo worked–That does not change just how incredible Victor Wembanyama is.