Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[F Gump]

In looking closely at OKC salaries, it looks like they are at a real crossroads, and it's hard to know which path they will choose. One option is to get rid of a max salary, which eases the strain a lot, either Chet or JWill. The other option is to keep their big 3 intact, and whittle in other areas. I'd guess they will keep the big 3, but who knows.

If they do the path that keeps their big 3, then can they get below A2? I think so, and it may be a bit easier than we tend to think.
1  Decline K Williams TO. This one seems really easy. Saves about 7M.
2 "Sell" pick 17 (include in a trade, or swap for future draft capital). With the change in rules, the ability to swap for future pick is less likely anymore. Saves about 5M.
3 Decline Hartenstein TO and just let him walk. Replace him with Sorber, their "redshirt" C from the 2025 draft. Maybe at the end of the day they also pick up a cheap young min salary 3rd string or 2-way project C. This would be a MAJOR move for them, because he's a significant piece of their core and is generally productive. Saves about 28M.

At that point, assuming they keep Dort, and if they leave slot 15 open for much of the year for developmental purposes, they are about 1M below A2, which I think they would find satisfactory.

Other options for Hartenstein would be a trade in theory, but no one will want his 28M salary. Or OKC could offer him a decline-and-sign deal where the 28M goes away, but he's retained at a much smaller number (16-17M, maybe?). However, if they did that, they would have to find a path to move off of 16-17M somewhere else, and I'm not sure they can really get there. 

Another place they could try to gain some savings might be with Dort, whose TO is for 18M+. Perhaps they work a decline-and-sign there as well, but there's not a lot of savings if you assume that in something like that Dort would get multiple years starting at least at 16-17M. 

I like the PJ for Wallace mentioned above, and think the players would be a great fit for their new teams. At its core, I would want to make it PJ for Wallace +17 and nothing else. But that 20 for 7 salary swap is a non-starter for OKC, and OKC would probably want to send out way more than PJ's 20M in salary, in order to make the deal accomplish what OKC would be looking to do. The players with the right-sized salaries are probably Joe, Wiggins, and Jaylin Williams. Maybe OKC finds another team to take one or more of those (making it a 3-way or 4-way deal), or maybe they just get sent to DAL. 

If I was an OKC fan, I might not like this summer at all.