AROUND the NBA:

[windjc]

I assume that ^ is a joke. Because OKC will probably have a multi-player blood-letting this summer. If they keep everyone, they will be FAR over Apron 2, and buried in tax and in consequences for having such a bloated payroll. On paper, they also have too many (more than 15) players locked up, when you include their draft picks. 

They might do some "unexpected" things because of the roster/payroll issues.

1 Their draft picks at 12 and 17 hold value, but because they add salary AND a player too, those picks are in the way in OKC. The salary for a pick just makes their already-impossible payroll even worse. 
... I am hearing that if they do a pick trade, they might NOT want to trade up (even bigger salary to add), they might prefer keeping 17 over 12, they might even trade down from 17, and it's even possible they would trade completely out of this draft, even though it's a "good draft" (if they get a decent offer of a future pick in exchange, 0 picks may be their wish).
2 OKC has multiple "moving parts" to their payroll that they can use to easily lower their payroll. The 2 draft picks can easily be traded, and they have 3 players with team options (Hartenstein, Dort, Ken Williams). 
3 Tax line is expected to be about 201M, and 2nd apron about 221M.
4 If you include all the players under contract, including the TOs, and both picks, they are at about 260M payroll. That would bring a 240M tax bill, plus the extreme roster-building penalties. No way.
5 If they keep NONE of those moving parts - trade away all the picks, and decline all the TO's - they almost fix their payroll. The remaining 12 players total 196.2M payroll, which leaves enough room under the tax line to fill the roster with 2 minimum salary players. 

If they add ANY of those 5 players, they end up over the tax line. There's about 20M space between tax line and A2. Here are the 5 moving parts.
Hartenstein  28.5M [I can envision a possible scenario where his TO is declined, but they re-sign him at ~20M).
Dort            18.2M
K Williams      7.2M
Pick 12          5.8M
Pick 17          4.5M

6 Here's the hard truth. They have to get rid of ALL those moving parts to land below the tax line. 

7 One alternate "stay tax-free" course might be to trade Caruso (19.6M) and then keep either (a) Dort, (b) the 2 picks, or © Hartenstein on a decline-and-re-sign at about 20M. 

8 Can they tolerate a "stay under A2" scenario (which would cost about 40M in tax plus an extra 20M in payroll plus potentially costs them revenue sharing and a share of tax collections)? If so, they could keep a 20M chunk of those moving parts. 

It's not an easy situation to solve. Whatever they do, it sure looks like they will have to make some talent-losing choices that I'm sure they don't want to make.

  No no no no no. Mavs2021 - self proclaimed guru - has laid out multiple posts telling us about all the players OKC can keep. So the only conclusion is they have an exclusion to taxation.