What’s your take on Zach Lowe’s dilemma of good teams like the Rockets and the Spurs making a big move (Giannis) to try to beat OKC now or trying to beat them later when the salary cap catches up to the Thunder and the young guys on your team are ready?
On the Legs pod and another one last week Zach Lowe outlined and discussed a decision that many teams are considering around the league in how to beat OKC, as they are going to be juggernauts both this year and the next half-decade at the least.
The Thunder are obviously great now with an MVP squarely in his prime and a collection of developing stars like Jalen Williams and Chet combined with a horde of elite defenders like Dort and breakout role players like Ajay Mitchell rounding out their roster.
They’re 23-1 and it’s a shock when other teams even compete with them in the fourth quarter in this regular season. That said, they were certainly tested last playoffs and were taken to 7 by a five and a half man Nuggets team who have since improved and the storybook Pacers may well have won the championship if Haliburton hadn’t gone down, so you could argue they’re certainly beatable given the right matchup.
However, while the Thunder’s way under the cap this year with Jalen Williams and Holmgren on rookie scale contracts, these guys will each get paid way more money in the coming years, and so the premium role players like Caruso, Dort and Hartenstein may have to be shipped off elsewhere to keep the roster cost low (the Thunder owners are not super-wealthy for NBA standards) thus making their depth worse (but again, they have the picks to get great prospects on rookie scale contracts including this year with the Clippers pick).
Further, OKC in a couple of years will have even better versions of Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, each of whom could become definitive top 10 players in the league if they continue to grow as the FO thinks they could and then the three-headed monster of OKC is verging on inevitable. What if the Thunder win the title and then get Darryn Peterson, do you have any serious chance of competing with them then?
He used the Rockets and Spurs as the primary examples, who each have the assets to go all-in now to get Giannis if they wanted to. If these teams did go get him, and tried to knock off the champions while Chet and Jalen Williams aren’t fully developed yet they have a real chance of beating a team who while great is not at the peak of its powers yet.
These teams though in such a trade do sacrifice a lot of their competitive window and some of their developing stars (Sengun most likely for the Rockets and one of Castle/Harper for the Spurs), and your team even as it is with Giannis may not yet be ready to try to beat the Thunder. Is Amen Thompson far enough down his progression that he can really be the third best player on a championship team this year? Has Wemby evolved enough as an offensive player to be #1B next to Giannis? Do all these talented role players have enough experience to compete against a championship team at the highest level?
Essential question is, do you take your shot now or later? Of course Giannis isn’t the only improvement option and the Rockets and Spurs are not the only teams that could compete with the Thunder if they had Giannis or made some other move, but I think it’s an interesting discussion.