Oklahoma City Thunder are going to find out very quickly paying everybody isn’t the move. The Thunder, fresh off an NBA championship, went from being one of the least expensive teams in the NBA to one of the most thanks to rookie extensions due to their young core. Jalen Williams and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander got massive paydays soon after winning the franchise's first championship since relocating from Seattle.
Now Chet Holmgren is the next core player on the Thunder to get a massive extension, signing a five-year, $250 million extension to stay in Oklahoma City. The Thunder see value in keeping their core, but it’s going to come at a crazy cost down the road. The new CBA signed between the league and its players makes it a lot harder to have multiple max contract players on the roster.
The Thunder are about to be in the same boat the Boston Celtics clawed themselves out of. If the Thunder manage to win championships having three stars and a bunch of role players then good for them. But it won’t be easy and they’re soon going to have to think about how they’re going to manage this roster moving forward.
Oklahoma City is going to find out why the Boston Celtics roster purge had little do with Jayson Tatum’s injury
The Boston Celtics just purged their roster this offseason. While it looks like they did it because there's little hope with Tatum out for most of if not all of the 2025-26 season, it was because they had the NBA’s most expensive roster and moving players around would have been nearly impossible.
They were into the second apron of the luxury tax, which meant stricter penalties and more difficulty trading players. The Celtics realized they had to do this not only because they were going to have a down year this upcoming season, but because their roster was aging and on player-friendly contracts.
Oklahoma City is headed toward that same fate. Boston has two max players now, but had to offload Kristaps Porzingis in a trade with Atlanta and traded Jrue Holiday to the Portland Trailblazers. The Thunder are going to have that same fate.
If they win more championships and continue to be the best in the Western conference, then it was worth it; that’s what Boston was banking on. But if the rest of the conference catches up to them, it will be increasingly difficult to escape the salary cap hole they’re putting themselves into.