The NBA Is Panicking, But There’s Nothing They Can Do: Why an Era of Superteams, MVP Inflation and Player Power Has the League Backed Into a Corner
The NBA spent the last decade trying to kill dynasties.
New rules, escalating luxury taxes, and the infamous “second apron” were supposed to make it harder than ever to hoard stars and steamroll the rest of the league. The result was a run executives and fans said they wanted: seven different champions in seven straight seasons, a level of parity the league hadn’t seen in generations.
But in trying to flatten the landscape, the NBA may have accidentally helped create a monster.
The Oklahoma City Thunder, once a small‑market underdog living off memories of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, now sit in a position no franchise has ever been in: young, already a champion, frighteningly deep, and armed with a future draft pick war chest that terrifies the rest of the league.
They have a 70‑win ceiling in the present and, thanks to the decaying Los Angeles Clippers, a realistic shot at landing top‑five picks while they’re already on top.
This was not how Adam Silver drew it up.
From Parity to Power Vacuum
Roll the tape back to 2024.
The Dallas Mavericks had just bounced the Thunder from the playoffs en route to an NBA Finals loss to the Boston Celtics. Around the league, the consensus was that parity was real and sustainable. Luka Dončić and Dallas. Shai Gilgeous‑Alexander and OKC. Jayson Tatum and Boston. Tyrese Haliburton’s Pacers coming fast. Multiple young, rising cores, spread across markets, each with a puncher’s chance.
It looked like the league had finally found balance.
Then came the kind of randomness no CBA can anticipate.
In Boston, Tatum tore his Achilles. With their franchise player out for at least a year and facing the crushing penalties of the second apron, the Celtics had no choice. They couldn’t keep paying everyone. Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis were shipped out in what were essentially salary dumps just to avoid the harshest tax penalties. A potential Eastern Conference mini‑dynasty was derailed overnight.
In Indiana, Haliburton suffered the same fate: a torn Achilles that knocked one of the league’s most entertaining up‑and‑coming teams off their trajectory.
In Dallas, the front office compounded misfortune with malpractice. Nico Harrison pulled the trigger on what many now call the worst trade of the era—perhaps of any era—gutting future flexibility and critical depth at the exact moment Dončić needed the right help the most. A franchise on the verge of perennial contention undercut its own window.
Individually, those events were tragic but survivable. Together, they created something else: a power vacuum.
While other contenders collapsed under the weight of injuries, bad timing, and self‑inflicted wounds, one organization was perfectly positioned to step into the void.
The Trade That Changed the Decade
The seeds of the Thunder’s rise were planted six years earlier.
In July 2019, the Clippers went all in for their shot at a title, trading a historic haul to pry Paul George away from Oklahoma City and convince Kawhi Leonard to sign in Los Angeles.
At the time, it was widely regarded as the price of doing business. For the Clippers, it was the cost of relevance in a city that bleeds purple and gold. For the Thunder, it was the start of a slow burn rebuild.
In hindsight, it may go down as the most lopsided trade in modern NBA history.
OKC didn’t just get a young Shai Gilgeous‑Alexander—then a promising guard, not yet a future MVP candidate. They got picks. A lot of picks. Unprotected and lightly protected first‑rounders and swaps that stretched deep into the future. On paper, they were “situational.” In practice, they became the backbone of the most favorable asset position we’ve ever seen.
Some of those earlier picks became core pieces—Jalen Williams among them. But it’s the 2026 and 2027 picks that have executives around the league staring at tankathon simulations in despair.
In 2026, the Thunder own three first‑round picks: their own, Utah’s, and the Clippers’ unprotected first. With the Clippers’ aging core deteriorating and their cap sheet bloated, that pick could easily land in the top five.
In 2027, OKC again controls three firsts. The Spurs’ and Nuggets’ picks are protected, but not fully, and are likely to convey. The crown jewel, though, is a pick swap with the Clippers. If L.A. bottoms out—as many around the league expect—Oklahoma City will once again be in line for a premium selection.
Layer in four more first‑rounders between 2028 and 2030, and you begin to see the scope of the problem for everyone else.
Imagine a team already good enough to win 68–70 games and a championship, then being gifted another franchise cornerstone on a rookie contract.
This is not how dynasties are supposed to be built in the second‑apron era. And yet, here we are.
A Celtic Echo—with a Crucial Difference
If this setup feels vaguely familiar, it should.
In 1986, the Boston Celtics came off a 67‑win championship season and somehow wound up with the second overall pick in the draft, courtesy of the fleeced Seattle SuperSonics. That pick became Len Bias, a transcendent talent whose tragic death days after the draft remains one of the league’s great “what ifs.”
The parallel is eerie: a reigning champion adding an elite prospect at the top of the draft. But there is a key difference.
Those Celtics were already creeping toward the back half of their window. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish were entering their late 20s and early 30s. Bias was meant to extend a run, not inaugurate one.
The Thunder’s core is just getting started. Shai Gilgeous‑Alexander is in his prime. Jalen Williams is still ascending. Their role players are young, cheap, and improving. Their coach is young. Their GM is still in acquisition mode.
Put simply: the Celtics of the mid‑80s were peaking. The Thunder of the mid‑2020s are climbing.
And the rest of the NBA is looking up.
The Second Apron Backfires
When the NBA introduced the second apron in 2023, the message was clear: if you spend like a superteam, you’ll pay like one. The penalties—lost flexibility, frozen picks, limited trade tools—were intentionally severe. The goal was to prevent exactly the type of multi‑star hoarding that fueled the Warriors, Heat and Cavaliers before them.
It has worked, to an extent. Teams like Boston felt the squeeze immediately, losing key veterans rather than diving deeper into punitive tax territory. Other contenders had to make hard choices on their fourth and fifth starters, often watching useful players walk away because the financial math no longer made sense.
The Thunder took a different path.
In the 2025–26 season, OKC ranks just 17th in payroll. They have one bona fide superstar, a flock of high‑end role players on rookie or team‑friendly deals, and a cap sheet that looks downright modest for a champion.
In theory, the second apron would catch them sooner or later. As their role players blossom into stars in their own right, they’ll demand bigger contracts. Their cap will swell. Their owner, Clay Bennett, has never been known as a free‑spender; his reluctance to pay Harden a decade ago is still infamous. The system is designed so that eventually, the Thunder won’t be able to pay everyone.
In practice, OKC may simply be too deep for it to matter.
They opened the 2025–26 season 18–1 without their second‑best player. They posted the highest net rating in league history despite extended absences from Jalen Williams, an All‑NBA third teamer and All‑Defensive second teamer. On most teams, losing a player of his caliber would be catastrophic. For the Thunder, it barely registered.
That’s what happens when your “role players” are two‑way studs on rookie deals, your offense is system‑based rather than star‑dependent, and your bench is filled with players other teams would kill to start.
Adam Silver’s second apron did stop one kind of superteam—the max‑contract constellation of aging veterans. It did nothing to stop a young juggernaut built through draft capital, player development, and ruthless decision‑making.
Sam Presti’s Ruthless Patience
Ask executives around the league what separates Oklahoma City from everybody else, and one answer comes up over and over.
Sam Presti.
Presti has long been admired for his drafting acumen. He was the architect of the original Thunder core—Durant, Westbrook, Harden, and Serge Ibaka—that reached the Finals at ages 22 and 23. But this version of the franchise is not just about talent identification. It’s about restraint.
Where other GMs have handed out max extensions based on upside and draft position, Presti has been almost cold‑blooded.
Consider Denver, where Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. were both given massive long‑term deals after showing flashes of star potential. It paid off with a championship—but at enormous financial risk, particularly given their injury histories. Presti, by contrast, has shown no such sentimentality. A player’s pedigree doesn’t guarantee a payday in Oklahoma City.
He traded Josh Giddey—who blossomed into a star in Chicago—for Alex Caruso, a role player on paper, but a perfect fit for OKC’s defensive identity and playoff needs. It was the kind of move many front offices simply do not make: offload a young, high‑ceiling player before his extension, in favor of an older, lower‑usage specialist.
To some, it felt cold. To Presti, it was rational.
This is a GM who once balked at paying James Harden what now looks like a reasonable extension, because it didn’t fit his long‑term risk profile. In the second‑apron era, that kind of caution isn’t just admirable—it’s weaponized.
The System vs. The Stars
If the original Thunder were a monument to raw talent, the new Thunder are a testament to structure.
Fifteen years ago, Oklahoma City appeared poised to dominate the league for a decade. Durant, Westbrook and Harden were generational offensive talents. But the team’s approach was often brutally simple: give the ball to a star and get out of the way. Scott Brooks’ offense became a running joke—his “secret plays” meme shorthand for unimaginative iso ball.
That version of OKC had no safety net. If one of its tentpoles faltered or got hurt, everything wobbled.
Today’s Thunder are different.
Head coach Mark Daigneault, once an unheralded hire, has quietly built one of the league’s most coherent systems. Offensively, they are powered by a rotating cast of ball handlers who relentlessly attack, collapse defenses and make quick decisions. Defensively, they swarm and switch with interchangeable length. No single player dictates their identity.
Except, of course, for Shai Gilgeous‑Alexander.
SGA is the engine that makes everything hum. His gravity is unmatched; even when he stands in the corner doing nothing, defenses tilt toward him. He is the platonic ideal of a three‑level scorer—elite at the rim, deadly in the mid‑range, and now, quietly, a highly efficient three‑point shooter.
You can argue he is not as all‑around complete as someone like Jokić—a less prolific rebounder and passer—but he doesn’t have to be. The roster is built to amplify his strengths and cover his weaknesses. When role players hit shots and attack closeouts, OKC looks unbeatable. When they don’t, SGA is left to shoulder an almost impossible burden.
If there is a crack in the Thunder’s armor, it lies there: in the bet that their cast around SGA will continue to scale up, becoming too good to ever collectively “go cold” in a playoff series.
If that happens, the rest of the league may be drawing dead.
Who Can Catch Them?
For much of the early 2020s, conventional wisdom said Boston would run the East while the West devolved into a bloodbath of contenders: Denver, Dallas, Phoenix, Memphis, the Warriors’ last gasp, the rising Rockets and Spurs.
Then one injury shifted the chessboard.
Tatum’s Achilles tear forced Boston into retreat at the exact moment Oklahoma City ascended. A team once mentioned as the “Thunder of the East” suddenly became a cautionary tale about how fragile windows can be under the second apron.
In the West, challengers have improved. The Lakers have pushed chips in around a new core, buoyed by Austin Reaves’ surprising leap from role‑playing guard to legitimate star‑level producer. Houston has taken a step forward. Denver has finally threaded some of its roster‑building needle. San Antonio, with Victor Wembanyama, has begun to understand how to weaponize its unicorn.
And yet, for all that, the Thunder remain the team to beat.
The only realistic way to drag them back to the pack might be the same way the Celtics were humbled: bad luck. A key injury. A mistimed extension for the wrong player. A miscalculation in a league where the margin for error is thinner than ever.
Short of that, rivals must hope that OKC’s extraordinary depth eventually normalizes—that role players plateau, that draft picks bust, that the sheer math of paying everyone finally forces Presti into painful choices.
It’s not much of a plan. But right now, it’s all anyone has.
The League That Built a Monster
The Thunder’s rise is not an accident. It is the product of vision, patience, and some of the savviest asset management the league has ever seen.
It is also, in a very real way, the product of everyone else’s mistakes.
The Clippers mortgaged a decade to chase a title that never came. The Mavericks swung and missed on their big move at precisely the wrong time. The Celtics and Pacers were betrayed by biology. And the NBA, in trying to legislate away superteams via the second apron, inadvertently created a world where a small‑market team that does everything right can become more powerful—and more insulated—than any free‑spending giant ever was.
Parity, it turns out, cuts both ways.
In a league where most teams are closer together than ever, one brilliantly run organization with a superstar, a system, and a mountain of draft capital can pull away from the pack with terrifying speed.
That organization happens to be in Oklahoma City.
And unless something changes—whether in the CBA, the Thunder’s medical luck, or Sam Presti’s judgment—the rest of the NBA may be spending the next decade chasing a team that was supposed to belong to a bygone era.
