As OKC Thunder players and coaches look to lead the franchise to back-to-back NBA Championships, GM Sam Presti is actively trying to set them up for many more down the road.
His current task at hand when it comes to doing so: scouring the market to see if Oklahoma City can somehow move up in this year's NBA Draft, if need be.
As things currently stand, the Thunder find themselves heading into June's draft with the rights to both the LA Clippers' and Philadelphia 76ers' first-round picks in their possession. Los Angeles' pick is currently projected to fall to 12 overall on the night, though it has a 1.5 percent chance of falling to the number one overall pick.
Based on recent history, seeing a little luck from the lottery gods is certainly possible.
However, per The Athletic's Sam Vecenie, it seems Oklahoma City's storied executive is willing to take matters into his own hands to land a highly coveted talent in this year's stacked class, as the Senior Writer revealed sources have said the Thunder are open to packaging some draft capital together to move up the board.
"Teams across the league look at Oklahoma City, as well, as a team primed to likely try to combine its picks to move up or to try to move one of these picks to move out of the draft," Vecenie wrote.
Thunder open to swap quantity for quality when it comes to draft picks
This idea of the Thunder packaging picks for a higher spot on the draft board is far from new.
Thanks to the back-end, wheeling-and-dealing ways of Sam Presti, over the next several years, Oklahoma City literally finds itself in possession of more draft picks than it can even feasibly use.
With this, it should come as no surprise that the word around the league is that their front office is looking to swap out quantity of picks for quality in value.
In this new era of crippling tax penalties, mapping out ways to avoid entering into either of the two aprons is key for ball clubs.
Considering the Thunder are currently on pace to enter the second-apron threshold next season as is, it's widely believed that their plan to avoid penalties is to use their abundance of draft capital to add promising young, cost-efficient talent to surround their core trio of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren over the coming years.
Clearly, per these latest reports, Presti and company are gunning for high-end prospects via this approach.
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