ESPN’s Zach Kram handed the Oklahoma City Thunder a C+ grade for their 2026 offseason, and the reasoning was understandable enough on the surface.
Signing Isaiah Hartenstein to a three-year, $75 million deal after Oklahoma City moved off his $28.5 million team option for 2026-27 was praised as one of the better center contracts of the summer.
That part was easy.
The criticism came elsewhere.
According to Kram’s framing, the Thunder’s other moves were about cost savings. Oklahoma City moved off Luguentz Dort, Aaron Wiggins, and Isaiah Joe for a combined seven second-round picks, dipping below the second apron in the process. The conclusion was that the logic made sense, but the result still made the Thunder “a bit worse” and considerably less deep.
That is one way to see it.
It is also the easiest way to miss what Oklahoma City is actually doing.
Thunder are clearly playing the long game
The Thunder’s offseason was never supposed to be graded like a one-year depth chart exercise. This is not a team scrambling to patch holes around a fragile core. It is not a team trying to keep an aging contender upright for one more season. It is not a team using draft capital as decoration while waiting for the next star trade to materialize.
Oklahoma City is trying to build something more difficult: a self-sustaining contender that can survive the modern CBA without losing its identity.
That requires a different kind of grading.
The Thunder do not need another star. They already have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, and enough top-end talent around them to remain firmly inside the championship picture. The challenge facing Oklahoma City is not how to build a star core. It is how to preserve one.
That distinction matters.
Once a team drafts and develops well enough, it eventually runs into the expensive side of its own success. Useful role players get paid. Extensions arrive. Internal raises stack up.
The support structure around the core becomes harder to maintain.
Under the new CBA, keeping everyone is not discipline. It is usually denial.
That is why the Thunder’s offseason should not be viewed primarily as cost-cutting. It should be viewed as asset cycling.
Assets Thunder received are being underrated
The seven second-round picks are not a footnote to that argument. They are the argument.
Dort arrived in Oklahoma City as an undrafted free agent in 2019 and eventually returned three second-round picks in a 2026 trade. Joe was waived by the 76ers in 2022, signed by the Thunder days later, developed into a rotation shooter, and returned two second-round picks. Wiggins was the No. 55 pick in the 2021 draft and eventually returned two more.
That is not just cost savings. That is development arbitrage.
Oklahoma City turned an undrafted player, a waived free agent, and a late second into seven second-rounders after getting years of useful rotation play from them. That is the kind of roster math that allows a small-market contender to keep refreshing itself without sacrificing the core.
The point is not that second-round picks are more valuable than Dort, Joe, or Wiggins in a vacuum. They are not. The point is that the Thunder extracted real NBA value from low-cost acquisition points, used those players during the rise, and converted them back into future flexibility before the financial pressure became harder to manage.
That is not a C+ process. That is brilliance disguised as subtraction.
Playoffs proved traded Thunder players were expendable
The playoff context matters, too.
Joe and Wiggins were useful regular-season players, but by the deepest point of Oklahoma City’s postseason run this past campaign, they were already bit pieces rather than essential rotation pillars. In the Western Conference Finals, Joe and Wiggins were effectively on the fringe of the rotation, with spot minutes or DNPs late in the series.
Dort’s case is more complicated because his defensive reputation is real, but even his postseason role had started to narrow. In the 2026 Western Conference Finals, Cason Wallace averaged 27.1 minutes, Alex Caruso averaged 26.2, and Jared McCain averaged 25.4, while Dort averaged just 19.3.
That does not make Dort unimportant. However, it does make him more movable than his name recognition suggests.
And that was before fully accounting for what a healthy Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell could have done to the minutes picture. Oklahoma City was not simply subtracting three core rotation players and hoping for the best. It was moving players whose roles had already begun shifting downward in the playoff hierarchy.
The payroll savings should not be treated as simple thrift, either.
Thunder have virtually guarantees future financial flexibility
That money is being banked against the second-apron problems that are coming later, not pocketed because the Thunder are suddenly cheap. Cason Wallace and Ajay Mitchell are not abstract future names. They are part of the next payroll wave, and if Oklahoma City believes both are long-term rotation answers, then clearing tomorrow’s financial runway now is part of preserving the contender.
That is the part a C+ grade risks flattening.
The Thunder did not just trade away depth. They converted replaceable playoff-minutes pressure into draft capital, future flexibility, and breathing room for the next round of internal extensions.
That is not the same thing as getting worse.
It is the cost of trying to stay great.
The difference is not semantic. Cost-cutting implies retreat. Asset cycling implies sequencing.
The Thunder moved expensive veteran depth before those contracts could become more difficult to manage. It recovered draft capital. It protected flexibility. It cleared space under the second apron.
Most importantly, it created room for the next layer of cost-controlled contributors to matter.
That may make the Thunder a little less proven on the margins today.
It may also help keep them elite for longer.
That is the tradeoff ESPN’s grade undersells.
Thunder cleverly extended title window
The Thunder’s hardest decisions were never going to be about chasing stars. They were always going to be about extending the window. Sam Presti’s job is not to make the loudest possible move. It is to keep the talent pipeline moving while navigating the financial pressure that comes with being this good, this young, and this deep.
That is why Hartenstein and Alex Caruso belong in a different category than the players moved.
They are not simply veteran luxuries.
They are bridge pieces.
Hartenstein matters because he protects the best version of Holmgren. He absorbs the heavy interior work, handles physical matchups, and allows Chet to remain a weakside rim protector, roaming disruptor, and matchup weapon instead of forcing him to take every bruising assignment. That defensive arrangement raises the ceiling of the entire frontcourt.
Caruso matters because he is connective tissue. His processing speed, defensive disruption, and veteran intelligence stabilize a young guard rotation without hijacking it. He is not blocking the future. He is helping organize it.
That is the kind of distinction a simple offseason grade can flatten.
Dort, Wiggins, and Joe were valuable. No serious reading of the Thunder should pretend otherwise. Dort’s physical defense, Wiggins’ reliability, and Joe’s shooting all helped make Oklahoma City what it became.
But valuable is not the same as untouchable.
For a team trying to stay ahead of the CBA, the question is not whether those players can help. The question is whether holding all of them deep into their next financial phase is the best way to preserve the contender. Oklahoma City appears to have answered no.
That answer may be uncomfortable.
It may also be correct.
The Thunder’s model depends on replacing expensive role-player depth with younger, cheaper contributors before the roster gets squeezed. That means Cason Wallace, Ajay Mitchell, Nikola Topić, Thomas Sorber, Aday Mara, Bennett Stirtz, two-way players, and future selections are not side projects.
They are the mechanism. They are how Oklahoma City keeps the machine running.
Thunder gameplan is simple
Trade veterans before they become too expensive. Turn outgoing contracts into picks or flexible value. Use first-round picks to secure cost-controlled rotation talent. Use second-round picks and two-way deals to keep stocking the developmental pipeline.
Repeat.
That is not a C+ idea. That is the entire plan.
The fair criticism is that the Thunder may be thinner next season. They probably are. Losing multiple trusted rotation players in one summer creates real risk. Some regular-season matchups will be harder.
Some bench units will be less stable. Daigneault may need more time to sort combinations. Younger players will have to prove they are ready for responsibility that used to belong to veterans.
Those are real costs.
But they are not evidence that Oklahoma City misread its situation. They are evidence that the Thunder understand exactly where they are.
Most contenders wait too long to make these choices. They cling to useful players until the contracts become negative value. They treat depth as something to preserve at all costs, then discover too late that the cost was the future.
They use picks to chase names instead of replenishing the rotation.
They mistake continuity for sustainability.
Oklahoma City is trying not to do that.
The Thunder are not chasing relevance. They already have it. They are trying to extend dominance.
That is why the offseason grade feels too narrow. It measures the immediate loss of familiar depth but gives too little credit for the structure behind the loss. It sees a team becoming slightly worse on paper without fully accounting for why the Thunder may have needed to get slightly less comfortable now in order to remain dangerous later.
The modern CBA punishes teams that treat depth as permanent.
Oklahoma City is treating depth as renewable.
That point becomes even harder to ignore when looking at the back of Oklahoma City’s roster.
The Thunder’s current top 10 is not theoretical depth. Except for Jared McCain, it is championship-tested depth.
Those players have already been through the pressure of playoff basketball, late-series adjustments, and the kind of rotation tightening that exposes fake depth quickly.
The remaining untested players are not ordinary end-of-bench fliers, either.
Thunder still have unbelievable depth
Disregarding the open 15th roster spot, the Thunder’s slots 11 through 14 are Nikola Topić, Thomas Sorber, Aday Mara, and Bennett Stirtz. They are 20, 20, 21, and 22 years old, respectively, and all four entered the league as first-round talents, with draft slots of No. 12, No. 15, No. 12, and No. 16.
That last detail matters.
Stirtz was not simply a prospect who fell into Oklahoma City’s lap. The Thunder traded up to get him, which makes his presence at the back of the roster even more revealing. This is not passive depth. It is targeted depth.
That is not normal.
Most teams use the back end of the roster for minimum veterans, emergency specialists, two-way conversions, or long-shot developmental bets. Oklahoma City is using those slots to store young, first-round-caliber talent behind an already playoff-tested top 10.
That is why the “less depth” criticism needs more precision.
The Thunder may have less familiar depth. They may have less proven regular-season depth. They may even have less certainty in November.
But they do not lack talent.
If anything, Oklahoma City has shifted from veteran depth to layered depth: a championship-tested top 10, followed by four young first-rounders who do not need to be rushed into responsibility before they are ready.
There may not be another team in the NBA with that kind of talent profile in roster spots 11 through 14.
That is the hidden luxury of the Thunder’s offseason. They can shed salary, bank picks, prepare for future second-apron pressure, and still look down the bench at four young players with real draft pedigree.
That is not a depleted roster.
That is a roster built to regenerate.
That is the bet.
If the next wave fails, the criticism will look sharper. If the young players are not ready, if the second-round picks do not become useful currency, or if the Thunder lose playoff games because the moved veterans would have solved specific problems, then the C+ will age well.
But if Wallace, Mitchell, Topić, Sorber, Mara, Stirtz, or the next incoming draft class absorb real minutes, the grade will look like it judged the wrong assignment. If Hartenstein and Caruso successfully bridge the present to the next version of the roster, the grade will look even worse. If Oklahoma City remains elite while refreshing the bottom and middle of its rotation, the offseason will look less like subtraction than design.
The question was never whether the Thunder could keep every useful player.
They could not.
The question was whether they could lose useful players without losing the system that made them useful.
That is the real test of Presti’s offseason, and if Oklahoma City passes it, this summer will not look like a C+.
It will look like the Thunder choosing the hard, necessary work of staying great.
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