Exploring The Final Days Of The Steven Adams x OKC Thunder Era
It was a beautiful run while it lasted. Steven Adams as the big man of the Oklahoma City Thunder, a bloke who so perfectly represented all that they were trying to achieve as a franchise. A beloved character in that city, quite possibly the second most popular player the Thunder has ever had behind Russell Westbrook (possibly). But all things must pass and the Thunder are now chin-deep in a rebuild while Steven Adams is preparing for preseason as a member of the New Orleans Pelicans.
How did it come to this? The major franchise-altering shift happened when Paul George was traded to the LA Clippers last offseason. That signalled the end of the Thunder in their efforts to keep pushing for titles in their current incarnation and Russell Westbrook was soon traded to the Houston Rockets in a philosophically related move. Both players garnered an almighty haul of draft picks and players and while last season was a feel-good story of lovely proportions it was only ever a single year proposition. No sooner had that season ended than the Sam Presti Garage Sale officially began.
You might have driven past the hand-written signs, maybe even seen the tables of junk set out on the driveway. With all those future draft picks in the locker, OKC are very much at the start of their rebuilding/retooling/transitional phase so after a decade of excellence (and missed opportunities) old mate Presti’s had to set up the stalls and hock anyone and anything of value which didn’t fit with that new timeline in exchange for others that did. And gather more draft picks. So many draft picks.
That put Steven Adams front and centre in the shop window if any team was keen on trading for the big fella. It would take a decent offer but if that offer did come along then mere sentimentality wouldn’t keep him in town. The NBA can be a cold business in that way. But of course it’s more complicated than that and it’d pay to tell the full story first and then get to how Adams fits into it.
For the Thunder, the offseason began with the matter of Chris Paul. They picked him up on that monster contract which nobody else wanted to touch and then revitalised his career by giving him room to do what he does best (rather than trying to do what works best next to James Harden). Can’t discount that he stayed healthy all season too. Add that into the recipe and take one year off that contract and the man had value once more, value which didn’t exist a year ago when he probably would have preferred a trade away from OKC then had it been an option. Thunder being the Thunder, they let Chris Paul take charge of where he wanted to go and still somehow picked up players and a first rounder from the Phoenix Suns. In exchange for Chris Paul and Abdel Nader they got back a first round pick in 2022 as well as Ricky Rubio, Kelly Oubre, Ty Jerome, and Jalen Lecque.
That wasn’t the first trade to get done either... by the time Chris Paul left they’d already flipped Dennis Schröder to the LA Lakers in exchange for Danny Green and the #28 pick in the 2020 draft. Which is where this all starts to get really confusing. Because before those trades were even confirmed by the league some of those incoming players were already on the move. Pour one out for the esteemed Thunder careers of Ricky Rubio, Danny Green, and Kelly Oubre. They weren’t in town for long but they left an indelible mark that none shall soon forget. Mostly because it meant I could rip off this most excellent Rubio/Adams/Mini-Me tweet...
Proud of that one.
Anyway those three guys all had more worth elsewhere so, as much fun as it would’ve been to see Ricky Rubio and Steven Adams on the same team, in came the Minnesota Timberwolves on draft day. They’d already taken Anthony Edwards with the first overall pick and wanted a point guard who could mesh with Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell and it just so happens Rubio is a beloved figure from his previous time in Minny. It also happened that OKC had been targetting this Serbian dude who was gonna go in the late-teens if they didn’t move up. So they did.
OKC already had the 25th pick thanks to the Jerami Grant trade with Denver a while back. They picked up the 28th in the Schröder trade with LAL. Then they packaged both to get the T-Wolves’ 17th overall (as well as James Johnson to balance some numbers). Important point to remember there about how hoarding assets work... all those draft picks (just before the 2020 draft they had 17 future firsts over the course of six years) aren’t just about the players they might draft with them. Those picks become trade tippers in moving up the draft or in trading for established players. Absolutely zero chance they use all of those picks on bringing in their own rookies.
Next thing, the Thunder had picked up Aleksej Pokuševski with the 17th overall pick. A Serbian big man with the skills of a guard. Only 18 years old - the youngest player selected on the day. He’ll be coming to America immediately though might be a couple years away from filling out his body frame to an NBA level. You never know though, people are always very conservative when it comes to foreign player predictions.
One thing’s for sure, Poku clearly fits into the Not Quite Yet category for the Thunder. With most of those draft picks from other teams they don’t have the Hinkie-style impetus to tank themselves but the West is ruthless right now and OKC are well aware they don’t have the talent to compete again yet. What they’re doing with their roster right now is focussing on player development and making sure that everything aligns for them to return to contention in 2-3 years (at least). It’s either that or risk a decade of competing for the eighth spot and never going anywhere, pretty much.
Danny Green’s stay in OKC was never going to last. As a three-time champion with three different franchises he’s exactly the kind of dude a team hoping to get over that last hurdle is going to target. The Thunder knew that... and they ultimately flipped him to Philadelphia in exchange for a 2025 first rounder, the rights to Vasilije Micic (a 26yo Euro guard who has yet to move to the USA since being drafted in 2014), the 34th overall pick in 2020 which ended up as French guard Theo Maledon, and the awful contract of Al Horford. Horford is 34 years old and remains an excellent player but he signed a four year $109m contract with Philly just a year ago and it didn’t work. The Sixers will be chuffed to get off that deal as cheaply as they did, picking up Danny Green and also Terrance Ferguson in the process (no pun intended) without losing anything they needed.
From the Thunder’s point of view, it gets weird when you consider Al Horford is not exactly trade-able right now and he’s got three more years on his deal. It could be that they back themselves to rehab his reputation like they did with CP3 or maybe they just wanted the picks and are happy to take on salary in the meantime. Both, probably. They did scoop up two very nice foreign prospects though. Micic is one of the absolute stars of the EuroLeague at the moment and as a Serbian national he’ll mesh nicely with Poka. And Theo Maledon had first round potential, just 19 years old and a guy who grew up idolising Tony Parker. Distinct international flavour to this Thunder team these days, aye?
Oh and then they sent Kelly Oubre to the Golden State Warriors. Too good to be rotting away on a Thunder team that has different priorities and the Warriors needed some wing help with the horrible news of Klay Thompson’s injury. This tips them into stratospheric levels of luxury tax but gotta do what ya gotta do. Steph Curry and Draymond Green aren’t getting any younger. GSW had a trade exception thanks to Andre Iguodala that allowed them to do this. OKC in exchange get a heavily protected 2021 first rounder... top 20 protected in fact. Easily the most disappointing of the Presti sales but I guess they just wanted to get that sorted sooner rather than later (perhaps they need the cap space? Also not a lot of other teams can afford a $14m salary on the drop like that).
Almost forgot... Presti also traded up in the second round to acquire 20 year old Czech baller Vít Krejčí, although he’s probably gonna be a stash played as he did his ACL earlier in the year. Still, that made it a trio of international prospects scooped up on draft night.
Riiiight so with all that ground work laid down it was clear that Steven Adams, on an expiring contract for a team that was locked into Al Horford for the time being, no longer truly fitted. Doubt they’d have kicked up a fuss if they’d had to keep him, Adams is great for the team culture and all that. Productive player too. But once the New Orleans Pelicans put the feelers out it was game over. Adams understood the state of play and was happy with the destination, especially with a two year extension baked into the pie. Soon enough we had a deal.
Presti also added, and this is crucial info, that it was “unlikely” that they’d have been willing to match whatever market value his next contract ended up demanding so basically if they didn’t trade him before the trade deadline then they’d be losing him for nothing in a year. Right now the plan it to maximise the every player’s value to the franchise. For players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort, that means developing their talents to where they can be leaders in a playoff series in a few years. For Steven Adams it eventually became clear that it meant trading him for picks and the odd prospect. In all honesty, Adams may still only be 27 years old but he’d likely be in his 30s before the Thunder are ready to go full steam ahead again and that’d mean stagnating in his prime years.
The only players who are still around from the start of last season are: SGA, Dort, Darius Bazley, Hamidou Diallo & Mike Muscala. Maybe you could count Isaiah Roby too but he spent most of the year in the G-League. Muscala opted into his contract so that wasn’t a team decision. The other four are young dudes who will form the core that OKC build around into the future. You can chuck in Pokuševski and Maledon to that group as preseason gets churning and guys like Admiral Schofield, T.J. Leaf, Justin Jackson, Frank Jackson, and Ty Jerome are all gonna have the chance to prove they deserve that status too (unless someone swoops in with a decent trade offer). A few veterans like Horford, George Hill, and Trevor Ariza will be there in the short term at least... probably with an eye to boost their stocks ahead of the trade deadline.
You can see how Steven Adams didn’t mesh with that... let alone that flipping him now is kinda sweet as a symbolic end of an era which signals that OKC aren’t pulling punches here. The motivations are clear, man. Look at those players. Look how incredibly young they are. Plenty of examples of the Thunder’s preference for rangy, athletic combo players too. We’re early in this rebuild thing but already the light at the end of the tunnel is visible, if you squint your eyes, with a line-up like SGA/Dort/Diallo/Bazley/Poku. It’s just that there’s still a lot of darkness to traverse before reaching that light. While Steven Adams might have lasted longer in the day than some of the shinier items on sale at Presti’s garage sale, while he might have had sentimental value too... when the offer finally came in all parties knew that a deal had to be done. As Sam Presti said: the franchise comes first, no exceptions.
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