The OKC Thunder Still Have a Big Problem

The OKC Thunder Still Have a Big Problem

parody is over baby the Oklahoma City Thunder just won the championship as the youngest team to win in almost 50 years their core Shane Gildus Alexander Jaylen Williams and Chad Hungren are 26 24 and 23 death on them like Aaron Wiggins Lou Dort Kesan Wallace all 26 and younger i mean Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hardenstein are the old heads so these kids were so good that they just became the third franchise in history to win 84 total games between the regular season and the playoffs joining the Warriors and the Bulls both NBA dynasties so what is to stop them from reeling off three four plus titles actually there is one thing that can kill a potential OKC dynasty whether they like it or not but the Pacers were so much better than anybody thought until Tyresese Hallebertton went down with that Achilles tear they had a legit chance to be the biggest underdog champ of all time according to betting odds instead that killer OKC defense came through in the third quarter especially Chad Homegrren my goodness and now they are the top dog in the NBA everybody else is hunting but you know back in the day when they made the finals in 2012 people also were thinking multiple championships oh sure Kevin Durant Russell Westbrook and James Harden were young but nothing could stop him until Harden went to the Olympics in 2012 during Team USA’s gold medal run guys like LeBron James and Dwayne Wade saw how talented 22-year-old James Harden was so they told him “You are way too good to be the sixth man in OKC you deserve your own team and max money.” So when OKC lowballed him Harden had the confidence to branch out and their big three was dead many called it the dumbest trade in history at that time but front office guy Sam Pressy was able to come back from that disaster and build this unstoppable roster and how did he do it well it goes back to one decision he made almost 20 years ago without this one little thing none of this happens so Shay Gilgis Alexander and Jaylen Williams are the Thunder two yes they’ve got depth and a great coach but SJA and JDub make them elite sga has been so good that he is now just the sixth player ever to drop 35 and5 in a championship run the list is MJ Kobe LeBron Giannis Jokic and SGA but winning Finals MVP put him on an even more elite list one of eight to win MVP and Finals MVP in the same season every other guy a top 10 player of all time that is the path that SGA is on but every Michael Jordan needs a Scotty Pippen and that’s Jaylen Williams even Scotty said “I see a lot of me in him for sure and I don’t even want to put a cap on him to say that he’s going to be me i see him being greater.” Which is insane to say just a few weeks ago why because in last year’s playoffs a big reason that the Thunder lost in the second round was JDub’s inconsistent play but this year the Thunder could count on his game every night in big moments like game five of the finals the Pacers had been pressuring SGA full court which made him really tired especially by game three when the Thunder lost so in game five Jay Dub took over he took the ball so SGA could play offball dub scored 48 points so SCA was fresh to close the game and a lot of stars don’t have that from their number two like Joic are we sure that Jamal Murray is going to step up every single night or Ants number two or Steph’s number two not a question in OKC anymore but the crazy thing is they got SGA and JDub from one trade they made 20 years ago so Sam Pressy was hired from the Spurs in 2007 his first move was to get younger trading Rashard Lewis to the Magic and in return he got a $9 million trade exception and that trade exception was used for Phoenix to dump salary so OKC got picks back one of those picks became Sergey Baka who was traded for a young Victor Oladipo at the Monosonus in 2016 who one year later were traded to get Paul George who was dealt in 2019 to the Clippers for SGA and a boatload of picks one of which was the 12th pick in 2022 aka Jaylen Williams so their big two the thing that made them a championship level team can be traced back to one little trade exception almost 20 years ago than genius level team building the entire way by Sam Presy but the team is way more than just their two best players of course and before we talk about what could prevent this OKC dynasty you have to know what makes them so good right now and the biggest thing is defense number one in the NBA felt like half their points this season came in transition off of a steal now Indie did a decent job but there were multiple stretches where the Pacers couldn’t even get in an offensive set i think their best defender is Lou Dort who bothered Tyrese Albertton but if he gets beat OKC has insane help defense to back him up look how Andrew Nimhard here is able to beat Dort closing out but JDub in the paint is going to leave Turner and shift up toward the ball while Shay on the weak side slides down and is ready to jump on the next pass alex Caruso might be the best offball defender in the league pascal Seakkum attacks but Caruso out of nowhere blows up the play it’s like their team plays with one mind actually kind of scary watch Seakum drive all four Thunder defenders collapse to the paint then once he picks up his dribble they immediately shoot back to the perimeter and guard their man kind of creepy but you ain’t safe in the paint either okc has two legitimate defensive bigs in Chet and Isaiah Hardenstein now on offense Rick Carile of the Pacers is a brilliant coach and his plan to pressure Shay worked in game three so there were legit concerns about SJA going into game four but the adjustment was to put the ball in JDub’s hands and he met the moment dub showed that he can both get ahead of steam going downhill and he can score in the half court off pick and roll so with SGA fresh he showed maybe the best one-on-one scoring in the league dude said that he studied Kobe Bryant’s game and it shows yes he can draw annoying fouls but he has a much deeper bag than that shay and his teammates had one of the best playoff runs of all time but with all that success comes money and a lot of it and depending on how they play this the Thunder just cannot survive don’t care how smart Sam Prey is or how young they are the second apron was designed to crush potential dynasties we have seen it year after year now so because SGA won MVP he’s now up for a huge extension at 35% of the salary cap and if he waits one more off seasonason to sign it he can maximize that cash for a full contract worth 413.2 million bucks that’s 86.5 million in the final year of his deal which means dude will make well over a million bucks per NBA game then Jayd Dub and Chad Homegrren are up for extensions the next year and if each guy makes either AllNBA or wins a major award which is pretty likely he’ll earn 30% of the cap so OKC could be spending 95% of their money on just three players that means everybody else is either going to have to earn peanuts or get off the team blue Dort by Isaiah Hartenstein by Quesan Wallace see you and you know a huge part of the Thunder success is their depth and team defense well all that could be blown up in a matter of just two years with this second apron now if you ask OKC they will say “Hey this is why we have a ton of draft picks to begin with as soon as we get expensive we can then just rotate out the expensive role players for cheap new rookies no big deal.” Okay but you would have to nail all of those draft picks to get really good rookies it’s exactly what screwed the Denver Nuggets don’t want to go into the second apron so they had to let role players go every offseason it’s why the Celtics are about to get blown up but there is one way that the Thunder can avoid this and if they do it it’ll change the NBA forever so a ton of people were really upset at Jaylen Brunson for what he did last year he took a pay cut so the New York Knicks could fit elite players around him people were mad at Brunson because what if other teams are going to expect their stars to take a big pay cut too well what if all three of the Thunder Stars take pay cuts which leads them to multiple titles that will then become the blueprint for every single contender going forward players would be pissed about it but it might be the only way that the Thunder can create a dynasty in this new era but the NBA offseason is officially here next up is the NBA draft so I did an official mock draft because after number one and two a lot of drama could go down on draft night

The Oklahoma City Thunder are NBA Champions but they still have a big problem. This is a look at what it means for them to win the title and what comes next.

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