Oklahoma City Thunder Roster Breakdown
Thunder make multiple moves in offseason, but now have roster decisions to make before opening night.
The Oklahoma City Thunder were one of the more active teams participating in trades this offseason, and now, with opening night approaching in the middle of October, Oklahoma City will have to figure out some ways to bring their roster down to the league regular season roster limit.
Let’s first recap how the six new Thunder players joined the team, beginning with players acquired in trades. The Thunder acquired Davis Bertans and Victor Oladipo in trades. While the Thunder acquired other players in trades like Rudy Gay, Usman Garuba, and TyTy Washington Jr., they’ve already had to waive those players due to roster constraints.
Using the draft, the Thunder acquired the draft rights to Cason Wallace and signed him to a contract, then they also signed second round draftee Keyontae Johnson to a two-way contract.
The Thunder signed Vasilije Micic from overseas in free agency and signed Jack White to a partially guaranteed deal.
While on paper the Thunder added six new players, they theoretically added a 7th new player in Chet Holmgren. Yes, Holmgren was under contract last season with Oklahoma City, but this will be the first time Holmgren gets to log his first NBA minutes after he was out all of last season due to injury.
The Roster
Here’s how the Thunder roster breaks down by height according to the team roster on NBA.com/stats:
6’6” and under
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 6’6”
Kenrich Williams 6’6”
Lindy Waters III 6’6”
Keyontae Johnson 6’6”
Jalen Williams 6’5”
Aaron Wiggins 6’5”
Luguentz Dort 6’4”
Vasilije Micic 6’4”
Cason Wallace 6’4”
Victor Oladipo 6’3”
Isaiah Joe 6’3”
Tre Mann 6’3”
6’7” and Above
Chet Holmgren 7’1”
Aleksej Pokusevski 7’0”
Olivier Sarr 6’11”
Davis Bertans 6’10”
Jaylin Williams 6’9”
Ousmane Dieng 6’9”
Josh Giddey 6’8”
Jeremiah Robinson-Earl 6’8”
Jack White 6’7”
The Cap Sheet
The Thunder have financial flexibility to acquire players in trades being $15.5 million under the tax. As far as signing free agents, they can only offer the veteran minimum since they used all of the room mid-level exception to sign Micic.
The problem for Oklahoma City at the moment is roster room. In the offseason, the NBA only allows a maximum of 21 players on the roster. The Thunder have 21 players right now with 15 players on guaranteed deals, three players on non-guaranteed deals, and three players on two-way contacts.
Oklahoma City has until the first game before the regular season to waive or trade three players who aren’t on two-way contracts.
Over/Under Wins
Last season the Thunder made significant improvement from the 2022 season, going from 24 wins in 2022 (14th out West) to 40 wins in 2023 and finishing with the 9th seed.
The over/under for the Thunder is slightly higher this season at 44.5 wins per DraftKings.com.