The Oklahoma City Thunder are in a rare position for teams in the NBA. They have a team that is both extremely young and extremely good, a true title contender by every metric other than playoff experience. What's more, rather than being out of future picks building that contender, they have a large collection of future draft capital to continue making upgrades.
There are a number of different paths forward that Sam Presti and the Thunder could take. They could move extremely slowly, using the picks to add cost-controlled talent to the roster and trust in their current players to develop into stars. They could make smaller individual deals to upgrade on the margins, similar to the Gordon Hayward deal they made at the Trade Deadline.
The Thunder could trade for a star
They could also make a home-run swing, adding another star while players like Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren are on their inexpensive rookie contracts. They have the scratch to make such a deal; the question becomes which stars will be available and who the Thunder would choose to go after.
Let's look at three superstar players who could both become available this summer and could reasonably be targets for the Thunder; we're looking at All-NBA level players, so Zach LaVine or Dejounte Murray wouldn't qualify, and someone like Trae Young would never be an option because of his poor fit.
We start with the player most likely to be available this summer who could return to the Northwest Division to play with the Thunder.