LAS VEGAS — With all of the NBA assembled here in the desert, a city where only money flows, it’s an apt time and setting to analyze how Sam Presti and the Thunder have maximized every cent of every dollar they’ve spent this summer.
The Thunder entered the offseason with north of $30 million in salary cap space, and unlike in 2021-22 when the Thunder’s end-of-season payroll was roughly $22 million below the salary floor — a shortfall that was distributed amongst Thunder players — the new collective bargaining agreement has harsh penalties for teams that fail to meet the salary floor by the start of the season, thus incentivizing teams to use their cap space in the offseason.
However, as the Thunder has creatively shown, there’s more than one way to spend.
Rather than signing free agents either on one-year deals to reach the salary floor, or on potentially burdensome multi-year deals, the Thunder approached its space with only the future in mind. A future in which the primes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren and who knows who else could all overlap.
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Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander smiles during a game against the Wizards at Paycom Center on Jan. 6.
Gilgeous-Alexander is already on his rookie max extension (which will pay him upwards of $40 million annually through 2026-27), and in the Thunder’s best-case scenario, the likes of Giddey, Williams and Holmgren could also be on their way to rookie max extensions. It’s obviously early, as Holmgren has yet to play in an NBA game, but it’s a scenario in which the Thunder is preparing for.
Keeping homegrown talent even under those contracts is possible under the new CBA, but it would also come with a gargantuan price tag for a small-market ownership group, led by Clay Bennett, that doesn’t have Steve Ballmer-sized pockets.
While it remains to be seen how Thunder ownership will respond if and when that juncture arrives, as it similarly did in 2012, Presti and Co. are operating in a way to not let present-day spending on a…
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