It's obvious that the Oklahoma City Thunder really pulled off a slam dunk with their offseason moves thus far, given how they re-signed Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams to rookie max extensions. But the biggest win in making these moves was avoiding one big mistake the Cleveland Cavaliers recently made, by not giving J-Dub a 30% salary escalator.
Let's break down exactly what I mean by this. During their negotiations, the Thunder had the option of giving Williams an 'escalator' (essentially meaning a condition) on his contract that would guarantee certain salary increases if he reached certain individual accomplishments in the future.
They ended up including multiple escalators on his deal. These are common and intended to incentivize a player and his agent to want to agree to signing it. But what Oklahoma City's front office didn't do was just given Jalen a blanket 30% escalator right off the bat. Instead, it was more of a tiered escalator system.
If Williams makes third-team All-NBA during the 2025-26 season, he will be able to earn 26 percent of the cap. If he makes All-NBA second-team, he would get 27 percent of it, and earning first-team will unlock the full 30 percent.
OKC didn't give J-Dub a 30% salary escalator like CLE gave Mobley
This is a much more reasonable way to implement the escalator system in a contract than just having the first-line incentive being the 30% mark. Obviously, going that route would have a much higher chance of putting the team in serious financial trouble somewhere along the line.
Once again, this represents the genius of the Thunder's management to orchestrate a deal for Jalen Williams in a way that's going to ideally help the team continue to build moving forward instead of putting them in a financial crunch. And again, they avoided making the mistake that Cleveland made in the not-too-distant past.
The deal that the Cavaliers gave Evan Mobley just a year ago included an immediate escalator to 30% of the salary cap even if he only makes third-team All-NBA (subscription required). A player and his agent are going to likely jump at the opportunity to sign that kind of deal, while the team may live to regret including that kind of luxury incentive.
It's just another example of how the Thunder's front office and their decision-making seem to be miles ahead of other decision-makers around the NBA. Thunder fans can take a victory lap seeing how their team is set up to succeed even more in the future.