The OKC Thunder have an overflowing roster ahead of the 2023-24 NBA season. The team will need to move on from at least five players prior to the season tipping off in October. That has left fans wondering who is on the chopping block for the Thunder?
Victor Oladipo was drafted second overall by the Magic in 2013 and played there for three years before he was traded to the OKC Thunder in 2016, along with Domantas Sabonis for Serge Ibaka.
He played for the OKC Thunder for just one season before he was traded again with Sabonis to the Indiana Pacers for Paul George. He played in Indiana for four seasons, where he was tabbed as an All-Star in 2018 and 2019 and grabbed a third team All-NBA honor in 2018.
Bubble Watch: Can Victor Oladipo Make the 2023-24 OKC Thunder roster?
He was traded to the Rockets in 2021 in the four-team trade that involved James Harden. Two months later, he was traded to the Miami Heat for a 2022 draft pick swap, Avery Bradley and Kelly Olynyk. In June 2022, Oladipo resigned with the Miami Heat on a two-year, eighteen-million dollar deal.
He was traded to the OKC Thunder on July 6th, 2023, along with a 2029 second-round pick and a 2030 second-round pick for a trade exception for the Heat. Oladipo’s best season was in 2017- 2018 when he averaged twenty-three points, five rebounds, and four assists per game, shooting forty-eight percent from the floor, thirty-seven percent on three-pointers, and eighty percent from the free-throw line.
Oladipo has battled injuries recently, with a ruptured quad tendon in the 2018-2019 season and a torn patellar tendon in his knee this past season. He comes the OKC Thunder still rehabbing from his knee injury, hoping to return to basketball activities in late October/early November.