The Perimeter Is Bare and Training Camp Is Six Weeks Away
There is a version of this offseason that looks like vision. Sam Presti traded Luguentz Dort, let Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe walk, absorbed the Spencer Jones rejection from Denver, and emerged with three second-round picks, a locked-in Hartenstein, and cap flexibility. That version is coherent. It is also incomplete, because it ignores what the Thunder were before those moves and what they are now.
Last season, OKC went 64-18 and won 78% of their games. They also went 9-7 in games decided by five points or fewer — a 56% clip that stood out like a fault line running beneath an otherwise pristine surface. Close games exposed something the blowout wins concealed: this team had real limits in the moments that decide playoff series. The perimeter contributors who surrounded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander provided enough spacing and defensive pressure to win big, but not enough composure to win tight. That was the problem entering the offseason. The Thunder did not solve it. They made it structurally worse.
Dort was not a scorer — 7.7 points per game on 37.5% shooting tells you that — but he was the primary perimeter defender, the player who took the opposing team's best wing and made him earn every possession. Joe was shooting 45.7% from the floor in 20 minutes a night, reliable and cheap. Wiggins was in the same tier. Gone, all three. What replaced them? Three second-round picks and an offer sheet that Denver matched inside 48 hours. The Spencer Jones pursuit was a reasonable swing; the outcome was a door slamming shut. OKC now enters training camp with Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso as the primary perimeter options behind Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jaylin Williams — who shot 41.7% while averaging under seven points — as the lead forward. That is not a depth chart. That is a core and a prayer.
The one genuine buffer is Ajay Mitchell. He averaged 14.2 points and 3.8 assists last season on 48.5% shooting, and when healthy he is exactly the secondary creator this roster needs — someone who can generate offense without running everything through Gilgeous-Alexander in the fourth quarter of a close game. But Mitchell was in day-to-day conditioning status through late July, and his availability heading into camp remains uncertain. Betting on a player's fitness as your primary answer to a structural problem is not a strategy. It is a hope dressed as one.
I have written three times this summer about the forward position being OKC's most dangerous exposure, and each time the roster has gotten thinner rather than fuller. The through-line of all three pieces is the same: draft capital is a future asset, and October is a present problem. The 2025-26 Thunder were good enough to absorb perimeter departures during the regular season — their late-season offensive surge, averaging over 121 points per game in the final stretch, masked the fragility underneath. Playoff basketball does not mask anything. It finds the crack and applies pressure until something gives. The crack here is the perimeter, and the Thunder have spent the summer widening it.
My declaration is this: if Mitchell is not fully healthy by the time the regular season begins, OKC will lose more close games than they did last year, not fewer. The core of Gilgeous-Alexander, Holmgren, and Hartenstein is legitimate and deep. But championships are not decided by who wins the comfortable games. They are decided by who can execute when the margin is three possessions and the other team's best player has the ball. The Thunder have traded away the players who made those moments survivable, and they have not replaced them. Three second-round picks do not guard wings in November.