With the 2025 NBA Draft now officially in the rearview, consensus opinion seems to be that the OKC Thunder crushed it with their two selections, as they snatched up Georgetown big Thomas Sorber at 15 and Northwestern wing Brooks Barnhizer at 44 overall.
As a result, not only are people saying that Sam Presti and company came away from the festivities with arguably the biggest steal in the draft, but that they managed to add their next Swiss Army man X-factor in the process.
Of course, even with all the hype surrounding the franchise, their draft-day decision-making isn't something that solely created positive and widely celebrated ripple effects.
In fact, in just a matter of days, the Thunder are almost certainly bound to be met with the devastating downside of taking on the likes of Sorber and Barnhizer.
Thunder must now part ways with players to make room for draft picks
Coming into this week's draft, there were many who believed the Thunder could trade some of, if not all of their draft picks in the illustrious event, with some even suggesting they could opt for swapping them out for future capital instead.
This latter concept was, in large, influenced by the fact that Oklahoma City currently has all 15 of their players from the 2025 NBA Championship run under contract for next year's campaign, meaning, as currently constructed, they literally have no room for any newcomers.
Ultimately, Sam Presti opted to bring on two young prospects during the two-day draft festivities anyway, which, while exciting, now guarantees that OKC will be cutting ties with at least a couple of their players before the start of 2025-26.
Considering the negative financial repercussions that would come with flat out cutting one of their players -- even the end-of-bench ones --, the most likely course of action the Thunder will look to take is via the trade route.
Now, the easy part is finding a plan. The hard part will be choosing who on OKC's roster is most expendable in their efforts to execute said plan.
Out of all the players within Mark Daigneault's arsenal, 12 saw north of 16.0 minutes per game on a regular basis during the 2024-25 campaign.
The full-timers who didn't receive such playing time were raw and recent first-round selections, like Ousmane Dieng, Dillon Jones, and Nikola Topic (redshirted due to injury).
Frankly, when looking at this Thunder roster, there's really no one player that will prove to be easy to move on from, let alone two.
Nevertheless, with the trade moratorium set to expire on July 6, Presti and company will likely soon be seeking out deals to clear up room on the depth chart to slot in both of their draft-day selectees.
With this, it all but solidifies the fact that a few familiar faces won't be around to help OKC fight for a repeat title push next year.