Ranking Thunder's Top Trade Targets After 2023 NBA Play-In Loss
The Oklahoma City Thunder's rebuilding project has finally picked up speed.
Given their wealth of trade assets, though, it's possible they'll use the 2023 NBA offseason to put themselves on the fast track to title contention.
Their young roster showed plenty of promise this season. They entered it as a potential tanker and exited as a play-in tournament participant. That's a sizable step in the right direction.
Still, they have the resources to trade for the type of player who could allow them to make a giant leap as soon as next season.
3. Obi Toppin, New York Knicks
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If the Thunder stick to their slow-and-steady plan for progress, Obi Toppin is exactly the kind of player they should go after.
The 25-year-old isn't even three calendar years removed from being the eighth overall pick of the 2020 draft, but his trade price shouldn't reflect that pedigree. He can't get major minutes in New York as long as Julius Randle is blocking his path, and it's possible that Toppin's limited role finally got the better of him. He looked out of sorts for much of this season and never did establish an offensive rhythm.
That might set off alarm sirens for the Knicks, but for an opportunistic buyer, the situation has major bargain potential.
If Toppin fine-tunes his outside shot—one of the few areas he improved this season—he could be a scoring threat from everywhere. Playing off premier playmakers like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Josh Giddey could bring out Toppin's best as a cutter and lob-finisher, and he should have plenty of room to operate near the basket with a (hopefully) healthy Chet Holmgren stretching out opposing defenses.
2. Deandre Ayton, Phoenix Suns
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Phoenix threw caution to the wind in its deadline deal for Kevin Durant, which makes sense given how the swap greatly improved the team's championship chances.
However, a trade of this magnitude also put the Suns under the spotlight. And if they don't live up to their hype this postseason, there will be a lot of finger-pointing going around. Deandre Ayton could easily wind up being the fall guy in that scenario.
His status with the team has felt tenuous ever since he was benched during Phoenix's biggest moment of the 2022 playoffs, and it's not like his restricted free agency venture was all rainbows and unicorns. His scoring (and offensive involvement) comes and goes, and if it disappears at the worst time, both he and the Suns might be open to a change.
He'd be a fun fit in the Thunder's frontcourt, and at 24 years old, he is young enough to grow and develop with this core. Combine OKC's backcourt talent with a frontcourt featuring both Holmgren and Ayton, and you may have just found the formula for the West's next title contender.
1. Mikal Bridges, Brooklyn Nets
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Mikal Bridges has been all-caps AWESOME in Brooklyn, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be long for the Nets. They don't exactly have a loaded roster around him, and constructing one on the fly could be tricky.
Trading Bridges would obviously make Brooklyn worse right now, but turning the 26-year-old—who, it's worth noting, was never even mentioned in All-Star talks before this season—into a pile of picks and prospects could be best for the franchise's future.
No team can better supply precisely that type of package than the Thunder. And OKC just might be willing to splurge on the rising swingman, who is young enough to step into this core without missing a stride.
He was the 10th player taken in 2018, or the one who went right before Gilgeous-Alexander. Pairing those two together with whomever else the Thunder can hold onto has a best-case scenario of spawning the next home-grown superteam.
