No one realizes it yet, but the Thunder are going to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo. When you think about it for just a few seconds, it’s so obvious.
The Thunder have the best package for Giannis
The Bucks will want a young star and picks.
The Celtics can offer Jalen Brown and Derrick White and some picks – but Brown is already going to be 30, so he isn’t much younger than Giannis. And Boston won’t have enough impactful picks. So if the Bucks make that trade, they won’t have any assets to rebuild quickly enough around Brown to make them a strong title contender. And they won’t be significantly better than the Knicks, a healthy 76ers, Pistons, or Celtics led by Tatum and Giannis.
The Jazz have picks, but they spent time tanking to get high picks. So they are not ready to compete.
The Warriors don’t have enough interesting players to give up.
The Bucks would normally have to settle for picks and some role players and rebuild, but the Thunder have the assets they’d need.
The Rockets already gave up assets for Kevin Durant last year.
But the Thunder? They have multiple picks thanks to all the trades they’ve made over the years, meaning that they’ll still probably have at least 1 pick per round in the draft over the next several years.
Source: https://fanspo.com/nba/teams/oklahoma-city-thunder/21/draft-picks
And they have 2 young stars in Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren that are both only just 25 and 24 respectively. And they are both impact players that are still improving.
So the Thunder have leverage here. They may only need to give 1 of these 2 stars away, and some of their picks
The Thunder need a Wembenyama Stopper
As for why the Thunder would make this trade? The team performed quite well despite Jalen Williams missing a lot of the year, and Chet Holmgren look thoroughly outmatched against Wembenyama and had a poor series.
The worst fear for the Thunder would be the prospect of dealing with Wembenyama – who is only 22½ years old – and his young teammates continuing to get better and beating them for years and years to come, with no answer. And potentially cutting short a potential Thunder dynasty
The perfect answer would be Giannis.
And lastly… the Thunder need to trade some of these picks, for the simple reason being that they literally can’t draft and keep all those players. There is only so many players you can put on a roster and only so much money you can spend on the roster.
It’s Gonna Happen
So the math works out perfectly. The Bucks can get a good, young star player that is no older than 25 and still getting better, while also having a lot of picks they can use or trade to accelerate a rebuild.
No other trade would allow the Bucks to quickly retool with a genuinely young star, and no other trade would give the Thunder a clear advantage over the Spurs.
