Thunder have the future draft assets to be able to move up without a problem
The biggest advantage the Thunder have in terms of moving up in the draft is that they can do so given all of their future draft stock. Oklahoma City owns 40 total rights to picks through 2027 and they could make basically any trade with any team in the league, depending on what year they want picks for!
If they truly wanted to, the Thunder could possibly acquire multiple Top-5 picks by giving up half of their future draft stock, but this is just strictly hypothetical and the Thunder are not thinking about trading 10+ draft picks to acquire two Top-5 picks this year.
It is just more of the “moral of the story,” that the Thunder “could” do this if they wanted to. This team has so many draft assets moving forward that even trading three future first-round picks to move up into the Top-5 this year really would not affect them much moving forward.
No other team in the league can say this, which is why the Thunder must find a way to move into the Top-5 of this year’s draft by making a trade with the Pistons, Rockets, Cavaliers, Raptors or Magic.
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Both the Cavs and Magic are reportedly interested in hearing out offers and potentially moving back if they can get a ton of value, which means the Thunder could potentially zone-in on trading for the 3rd (Cleveland) or 5th (Orlando) picks in this year’s draft.
Trading up from 6th overall makes complete sense for the Oklahoma City Thunder and adding one of the top talents in this year’s draft to their roster will immediately help them begin their pursuit back to the NBA Finals in future years.
