With their treasure trove of draft capital and overflow of promising young prospects, the OKC Thunder are viewed as a team well-positioned to make a major splash this trade season.
Despite the excitement that is generally sparked by such a standing, however, recent rumblings seem to suggest that GM Sam Presti may be leaning toward remaining dormant ahead of the February 6 deadline.
Of course, even with this circulating chatter, it's realistic to believe that teams around the league could still dial up Oklahoma City in pursuit of a few of their highly valuable and expendable assets. After all, there's no shame in shooting one's shot.
Looking at the league's current landscape, there appear to be a few teams, in particular, who could be quite eager to enter trade negotiations with the Thunder before next month's cut-off
Teams that could pursue trade with Thunder ahead of February 6 deadline
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers are a team desperate to position themselves for a title run during these final years of LeBron James's career. Word on the street is they've been quite active behind the scenes this trade season in their quest to attain an outsourced talent upgrade.
Unfortunately, however, due to their past attempts of doing exactly this, Los Angeles finds itself in a bit of a pickle as they don't seem to have the assets necessary to land some of their more coveted targets such as Jazz center Walker Kessler or Indiana Pacers big Myles Turner.
Recently, the folks at Bleacher Report proposed the concept of the Thunder looking to exchange several of their future draft picks to a team looking to win now for perhaps a more valuable pick at some point down the road.
Being they own just one first-round pick between now and the 2027 NBA Draft, Los Angeles may be an ideal suitor for this kind of trade experiment. Perhaps one or two of their potential four first-rounders in this upcoming summer's draft, along with another coming in the next few years could entice the Lakers to swap out one of their own unprotected picks in the distant future.
For LA, it allows them to add more assets that can be used in an immediate move while, for Oklahoma City, it sees them swap out a higher quantity of picks for better quality.
Utah Jazz
Just recently, Utah performed the type of operation discussed in the Lakers section above as they opted to offload three future first-round picks with varying protections to the asset-strapped Suns in exchange for an unprotected first-rounder in 2031.
The Jazz are in the early stages of a full-fledged rebuild and, even though they still have plenty of picks left in their reserves following the deal with Phoenix, they may be interested in the idea of replacing some of the capital they lost.
The Thunder have enough picks at their disposal to treat every team in the entire league once over, so, obviously, they'd be a desirable partner for a tanking team to pursue a trade with
On the flip side, the Jazz have several interesting talents who could be of great service within Oklahoma City's rotation, with notable names like offensive spark-plug Collin Sexton and tweener big John Collins rumored to be available.
An exchange between these two parties could prove to be mutually beneficial.
Brooklyn Nets
This trade season, the ball club most frequently linked to the Thunder as a possible partner in crime has been the Brooklyn Nets due, in large, to their top-billed target Cameron Johnson.
Oklahoma City has been mightily pedestrian in their long-range shooting game in 2024-25 and has struggled against longer and lengthier forwards. To many, adding the 6-foot-8 build and 19.4 points on 41.9 percent shooting from deep averages of Johnson would be a seamless solution to these very real struggles for the team.
As things currently stand, Brooklyn's price for their sniper is rumored to be rather high as Jake Fischer has noted the organization has asked for "as many as two first-round picks packaged with a young player."
Should they be hell-bent on bringing back such a package, their best shot at doing so would be via a trade with Oklahoma City.
While reports currently indicate no communication has been had between these two organizations in regard to a potential Cam Johnson deal, don't be surprised if talks spark up as we inch closer to the February 6 deadline.