With Jalen Williams Signing His Own Max Extension, The Thunder Have Spent Up To $822 Million This Summer To Keep Their Championship Core Together For The Foreseeable Future

A few weeks ago we got the news that SGA had decided to take his extension a year early to the tune of $287M. The max extension wasn't a surprise, but the timing was. He could have waited a year and signed for even more, but he decided to take the guaranteed money now and honestly who could blame him?

Yesterday, we got the news that Chet Holmgren and the Thunder agreed to a rookie max extension, which was another $250M. While some may have thought that was an overpay, I couldn't disagree more. That's the market price with a young two way player who is already ELITE defensively and is only going to get better on the other side of the court. Sure there's injury risk, but that's true of anyone. As far as I'm concerned, this was another no brainer extension.

And now today, we have the final piece of the puzzle with Jalen Williams agreeing to a max extension of his own, only his can get up to $287M should he make All NBA this season, which feels like a lock should he meet the 65 game requirement

All in all, the Thunder have committed up to $822 MILLION this summer to keep their core intact. Just like last summer when the Celts threw out max extensions to all their guys, the Thunder are doing the same. The difference of course is that the Thunder's max extensions are for much younger players. These are only rookie max extensions, we haven't even gotten to the next wave which would be the supermax 35% extensions that you would think are coming as well in a few years.

Now that all the extensions are officially locked in, there's good news and bad news. The good news is OKC's core is locked up long term, which is the most important part of any NBA team, let alone a title contender/champion. That's your foundation that everything will be built around, and it's hard to argue that there are too many cores you'd rather have. 

The bad news is of course, the 2nd apron cuts are coming. They are unavoidable, unfortunately. The Thunder as constructed will get their chance to defend their title, but after this year? Change is coming. That's the reality of the new CBA, and the Thunder are now given 2 choices.

1. Offload salary next summer to push out the 2nd apron clock (iHart/Dort etc)

2. Offload no salary and begin their 2nd apron clock, where you get 2 years before a reset

I get why Thunder fans may not want to hear it because who would want to hear that reality while celebrating your title, but the math is the math. 

Remember, that JDub number uses the 25% max, but it's most likely going to be slightly higher and be the 30% by the time we get to 2026-27. 

As it stands right now, the 2nd apron threshold in 2026-27 is $222M. Factoring in these extensions, the Thunder now sit at $246M (bump it up slightly if it ends up the 30% max). That means to get under the apron and push out their clock, they're going to need to offload around $24M in salary. Certainly not impossible, you could get that done just by turning down iHart's option or maybe moving the iHart/Dort salary for players that bring the number down to a combined $24M. 

The Thunder are in a unique position because they are armed with a ton of picks they can use to take swings on replacements. Maybe those picks pan out, maybe they don't. But what we're seeing is yet another team build right way and ultimately still get screwed to some degree by the CBA. This is no different from what the Magic are now dealing with after their Paolo max extension. Whether you like it or not, you are going to be forced to offload key important depth pieces to stay under the 2nd apron if you have a super expensive core.

The way I saw people react to the Chet/JDub extensions didn't really make sense. These announcements don't tell you the Thunder will eventually have to break up the core like people were suggesting. Far from it. It tells you the pieces around them are cooked. Suddenly, Cason Wallace's pending extension could become a little trickier. iHart, Dort, Caruso, Wiggins, Joe etc are going to be the cap casualties, and the Thunder's challenge will be just like every other 2nd apron team in terms of finding cheap talent that can still maintain their level of success while they deal with the roster building constraints of the 2nd apron.

It's annoying that this team can win the title and then only gets 1 more year to try and repeat as constructed before it's time to sell off key pieces. It was annoying when this shit happened to the Celtics and their 2 year window, and now OKC is in the same boat. Their choices are either to offload rotation pieces or to start the 2nd apron death clock. How does that make any sense or make the league better?

The same way Magic fans are getting boned after waiting so long to get good, finally having a competitive team only to get to experience it for 2-3 years is bullshit. The same is true for these Thunder. Sure, it's possible they can retool and hit on all these cheap picks, but that's certainly not a guarantee.

As someone who just lived through this, my advice to Thunder fans would be to mentally block all the 2nd apron and eventual cuts out of your mind for the next year. Just focus on defending your title. No team since the Warriors as a defending Champ has made it past the 2nd round, and the journey back up the mountain this time around is going to be 10000x harder. You are now the hunted, where every team is going to treat your games as the championship. 

Enjoy it, because the team you know and love at the moment unfortunately has an expiration date that's going to arrive MUCH sooner than you think or want to believe. Welcome to the new CBA.