The Thunder shouldn't get penalized by NBA's salary cap for front office brilliance
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The NBA shouldn't harshly penalize teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder for correctly identifying good basketball players and building great rosters.
Oklahoma City signed former No. 2 overall pick Chet Holmgren to a five-year, $250 million extension on Wednesday morning. This comes just one week after the organization also signed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to a record-high deal on a four-year extension worth $285 million.
Jalen Williams, who played an integral role in helping the Thunder win the NBA championship in 2025, is also eligible for a max extension this offseason as well. To pay all three while also keeping the rest of their core together is likely to become prohibitively expensive due to the NBA's salary cap, but that's a serious problem.
Williams is the next priority for the team, per Shams Charania (via ESPN):
"Oklahoma City officials will now move toward locking in All-NBA superstar Jalen Williams, who has momentum in his rookie extension talks."
Eventually, however, it might become too costly to keep this young core together.
Once teams hit a certain salary cap threshold, the collective bargaining agreement gives harsh penalties that provide prohibitive basketball limitations about what teams can and cannot do.
NBA front offices should have as much incentive as possible to make the best choices available to them, which includes drafting correctly. The Thunder snagged Holmgren and Williams in the same class and should not have to worry about whether or not they can afford to pay both of them due to the second apron.
I’d be in favor of teams being rewarded for drafting All-NBA players. Think it’d be reasonable for these players to cost just 25% of the cap even if they do make All-NBA and get 30% of cap in cash payment.
Teams shouldn’t be rooting against their players making All-NBA. https://t.co/axQGsi9QU4— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) July 7, 2025
One solution suggested by Sam Vecenie of The Athletic makes a lot of sense: What if the players still got paid their full max contract but it didn't count quite as much against the cap if they were drafted by the organization?
Considering that there is reportedly "momentum" for the Thunder to sign Williams to an expensive extension, too, what about the rest of the role players on Oklahoma City? Do the Thunder have to actively root against the success of recent draft picks like Thomas Sorber, Nikola Topić, or Cason Wallace?
Here is more Howard Beck about how the Thunder had to break up sooner than expected when they had James Harden as well as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook (via The Ringer):
"The last Thunder reign was undermined by a punitive new luxury-tax system that prompted Presti to trade Harden. Technically, this Thunder reign could be threatened by an even more punitive system that penalizes high spenders by shackling their ability to make trades or sign players.
Those challenges linger on the not so distant horizon, as Presti stares down a system specifically designed to force great teams to shed talent, to make dynasties nearly obsolete. But no team is better positioned to defy it all."
The collective bargaining agreement was, in theory, put in to place to avoid big markets overspending small markets and eliminating parity across the league. Oklahoma City plays in a small market and shouldn't have to worry about breaking up the band if ownership is willing to spend the money necessary.
It's possible that the Thunder are put up for sale while their valuation is particularly high after a championship win, and if a new ownership group takes over, they'll have some unnecessary difficult decisions to make.
This is an obvious prison of their own making by the NBA, but it shouldn't have to be this way.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Thunder shouldn't get penalized by NBA's salary cap for front office brilliance
