Thunder make lofty $32.8 million decision ahead of opening night vs Nuggets

As currently constructed, there's a strong argument to be made that the OKC Thunder roster consists of the best collection of young talent the association has to offer.

In fact, boasting an average age of just 24.148 years old, Oklahoma City enters the 2024-25 season as the youngest in the league. Considering they are coming off a campaign where they claimed the top seed in the Western Conference and won their first playoff series since 2016, this is a truly wild factoid.

With a core chock full of rookie-scale and mere first-contract contributors, the future seems astronomically bright for Mark Daigneault's ball club, and, recently, the front office has made some rather lucrative financial decisions that will lock down this youthful unit for at least the next two seasons.

OKC Thunder exercise rookie scale team options for several key players

Ahead of Thursday's season opener against the Denver Nuggets, the team announced via a press release that they have exercised their rookie scale team options on four second and third-year players for the 2025-26 NBA season.

Heading into this year's run, all players involved were already attached to guaranteed paydays. Now, with this announcement, they'll also have their salaries locked in for the next league year, with their financial figures reading as follows:

- Chet Holmgren: Fourth year, $13,731,368
- Ousmane Dieng: Fourth year, $6,670,882
- Jalen Williams: Fourth year, $6,580,997
- Cason Wallace: Third year, $5,820,240

Outside of Ousmane Dieng, three of these newly exercised youngsters have established themselves as key cogs within OKC's main rotation.

Chet Holmgren is coming off a runner-up Rookie of the Year season where he dropped impressive two-way averages of 16.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 2.3 blocks on 53.0 percent shooting from the field and 37.0 percent shooting from distance.

Jalen Williams served as the number two option on last year's 57-win Thunder team while posting 19.1 points, 4.5 assists, and 4.0 rebounds on a highly efficient 54.0 percent shooting from the floor and 42.7 percent shooting from deep.

As for Cason Wallace, he's coming off an under-the-radar, All-Rookie Team selected debut season where he played in all 82 games and finished with 6.8 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.5 assists on 49.1 percent shooting from the floor and 41.9 percent shooting from beyond the arc.

Ousmane Dieng is still a work in progress through two full seasons played, though displayed some serious potential throughout this year's preseason and could be in line for early season work with the Thunder after their recent string of injuries.

Though all of these players may currently find themselves at varying stages of the young stud spectrum, throughout their respective tenures they've done more than enough to convince the Thunder that they're worthy of having a combined $32.8 million committed to them for the 2025-26 season.