Why Thunder are tabbed as 'best landing spot' in possible Giannis Antetokounmpo trade

The OKC Thunder may be off to a historic start to the 2024-25 NBA season, but they are far from the main point of discussion through roughly three weeks of league play.

Last week, Bill Reiter of CBS Sports dropped a bombshell report that "teams are circling—and hopeful" that Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo could become available on the trade market this season should Milwaukee (1-6) continue to struggle with their core as currently constructed.

Now, though these comments were provided to Reiter by an anonymous Western Conference executive, considering the magnitude of and complexities that would come with such an ordeal, at least for the moment, the concept of seeing the Greek Freak on the move any time soon is best viewed as just fun early-season speculation.

However, despite this sound and reserved logic, it's far from likely to stop sports media cycles from churning out hypothetical pieces concerning potential trade packages and destinations for the two-time NBA MVP, and, just recently, the folks at Bleacher Report threw their hat into the proverbial ring to discuss where they believe the "best landing spot" for his services would be.

Interestingly enough, writer Zach Buckley pegged the Thunder as such a location.

Thunder tabbed as 'best landing spot' for Giannis Antetokounmpo

As suggested earlier, a blockbuster trade involving Giannis would be quite complicated, as it would almost certainly require any interested party to cough up substantial assets, both in the form of draft capital and young, promising talents, in an effort to attain the star forward.

No organization has such value at their disposal... well, none outside of Oklahoma City.

Through their wheeling and dealing ways over the last several years, the franchise has amassed an actual treasure trove of these kinds of assets.

In the 2025 NBA Draft alone they could have as many as four first-rounders within their grasp and have between nine and 15 first-round picks over the next seven drafts. On top of this, currently on their roster, they have six first-round selected talents from over the last three drafts, five of whom were snatched up in the lottery.

As Buckley broke it down in his piece:

"The Thunder's draft-pick collection runs deeper than anyone's, and they'd have no shortage of rising stars and mystery-box prospects to send back in a megatrade."

Obviously the goal with such a transaction would be to partner Antetokounmpo with fellow superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, so the Thunder would need to find a collection of exterior assets that could entice the Bucks to accept such a large-scale deal.

Presumably, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams would also be held onto, so that would leave the likes of Cason Wallace, Ousmane Dieng, Aaron Wiggins, Dillon Jones, and their most recent lottery-selected prospect, Nikola Topic all eligible to be packaged together with an obscene amount of future first-round picks in an outbound offer.

Though Buckley would stress the fact that, even without partaking in this kind of exchange, the Thunder as currently constructed could still find themselves winning the 2025 NBA Finals, he would stress "it's hard to argue they'd be better off not doing the deal," as he believes adding the championship-experienced superstar to this core could have people viewing the new-look roster as "better than that of the defending champion Boston Celtics."

While there may already be a case for them with the way they're currently filled out, adding Giannis Antetokounmpo into the mix may be exactly what Oklahoma City needs to push them over the edge.

Do they need to make such a move? No!

Still, as stated earlier, it's just fun early-season speculation to ponder on.