Oklahoma City Thunder Lose the Spencer Jones Race and Keep Getting Thinner

The Oklahoma City Thunder spent the past week trying to buy back a version of something they had already given away. On July 25 they handed Denver restricted free agent Spencer Jones a two-year, $12 million offer sheet, fully guaranteed. Two days later the Nuggets matched it and kept him. So Oklahoma City rolls into August with the same 14 standard contracts it had a week earlier, one open roster spot, and a bench that has been stripped of nearly every reliable shooter from the 2025 championship team. None of that happened by accident. All of it is still a problem.

The week that was in Oklahoma City Thunder news

Jones is a 6-foot-7 undrafted Stanford forward who started 37 games for Denver last season and averaged 5.5 points on 50.4 percent shooting. The number that got Sam Presti's attention came in April: Jones shot 69.2 percent from three in the playoffs, the best mark among eligible players, while logging about 24 minutes a night in Denver's six-game first-round loss to Minnesota. A two-year, $12 million commitment for that kind of spacing is the sort of low-risk swing the Thunder used to make in their sleep. Denver simply decided it liked the price too.

The timing was awkward, because the day after the offer sheet went in, ESPN's Tim MacMahon put Oklahoma City on his list of 2026 offseason losers. His reasoning was blunt: a year and change removed from a title, the Thunder traded away three contributors from that team. Isaiah Joe went to Detroit. Aaron Wiggins went to Atlanta. Luguentz Dort went to Atlanta too. The return in all three cases was second-round picks. MacMahon's take landed before Isaiah Hartenstein's new deal was fully digested, but the shape of the critique is fair, and the Jones pursuit was the front office more or less conceding the point.

How the Thunder got here

Last season was, by every measure except the one that counts, spectacular. Oklahoma City opened 24-1, tying the 2015-16 Warriors for the best 25-game start in league history, ripped off a franchise-record 16-game winning streak, and finished 64-18 with the league's best point differential at plus-11.6. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won his second straight MVP, becoming the 14th player to go back-to-back. Chet Holmgren made All-NBA Third Team and All-Defensive First Team and finished runner-up to Victor Wembanyama for Defensive Player of the Year. Cason Wallace made All-Defensive Second Team. Jalen Williams missed 49 games with a recurring hamstring problem and the team barely wobbled.

Then the playoffs. They swept Phoenix, swept the Lakers, and reached a third consecutive Western Conference finals. They led San Antonio 3-2. Williams and breakout guard Ajay Mitchell got hurt, and the Spurs won Game 6 and then Game 7 on May 30, 111-103, with Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 35 in the loss. Oklahoma City became the seventh straight defending champion to miss the Finals. That is the frame for everything that has followed.

The cap sheet is the actual story

The extensions Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren signed in the summer of 2025 all begin now, and they total roughly $822 million. There is no version of this roster where the Thunder keep paying premium money for eighth and ninth men. So they didn't.

• July 6: Wiggins traded to Atlanta for 2030 and 2032 second-round picks.
• July 6: Joe traded to Detroit for a 2030 Minnesota second and a 2031 Detroit second.
• July 6: Hartenstein re-signed on a three-year, $75 million deal running through 2028-29, with a trade kicker.
• July 6: Kenrich Williams re-signed.
• July 19: Dort sent to Atlanta in a three-team deal that routed Zaccharie Risacher to Dallas; Oklahoma City took back a 2027 Chicago second and 2031 and 2032 Atlanta seconds, plus a trade exception worth roughly $17 million.

The Dort sequence is the one worth sitting with. The Thunder picked up his $17.7 million team option in late June, which looked like a vote of confidence, then flipped him three weeks later for picks. Exercising the option was the mechanism, not the endorsement. Between the three trades, Presti added seven second-round picks this offseason, all of it in service of getting the payroll clear of the second apron. Branden Carlson left for Portland on July 1 and Payton Sandfort was waived.

What the roster looks like now, and how the rookies looked in Vegas

Fourteen players on standard deals: Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Holmgren, Hartenstein, Alex Caruso, Wallace, Mitchell, Jaylin Williams, Kenrich Williams, Jared McCain, Nikola Topic, Thomas Sorber, Aday Mara and Bennett Stirtz. Three on two-ways: Brooks Barnhizer, undrafted Creighton guard Josh Dix, and second-rounder Otega Oweh, all signed July 3.

McCain is the sleeper. Oklahoma City acquired the 2024 No. 16 pick from Philadelphia at the February deadline, giving up a 2026 first-round pick and three seconds, and with Joe and Dort gone he has an obvious runway. The bigger open question is who slots into Dort's starting spot. Wallace is the clean answer, a point-of-attack defender who shoots it better than Dort did. Mitchell is the higher-ceiling answer, a driver and pull-up shooter who would tilt the first unit toward offense. Mark Daigneault has all of camp to sort it out and no obvious wrong choice.

The results were ugly and irrelevant in roughly equal measure: Oklahoma City went 0-6 across Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. The film was better. Mara, the 7-foot-3 center taken 12th, averaged 9.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.8 blocks on 56 percent shooting over five games, and his passing was the most watchable thing the Thunder did all month. Stirtz, taken 16th after a trade up with Memphis, put up 14.4 points and 3.4 assists a game while shooting 45 percent from the field and 30 percent from three. In a 106-103 loss to Denver on July 15, Stirtz scored 22 and Mara went 6-for-6 for 14 points with seven rebounds and six assists. Both were shut down minutes before the Dallas game, which is standard treatment for first-rounders once a team has seen enough. Oweh made it through about a game and a half before spraining an ankle.

Injury and rehab watch

• Jalen Williams: the hamstring that cost him 49 games and flared again in the conference finals. No public update from the team this summer.
• Ajay Mitchell: hurt during the San Antonio series. Also no public update.
• Nikola Topic: missed the bulk of his second season while being treated for testicular cancer after losing his rookie year to an ACL tear.
• Otega Oweh: ankle sprain in Vegas, expected to be a factor by October's preseason slate.

What's next on the Oklahoma City Thunder calendar

The extension window is the live business. Wallace's team option pays him $7.24 million in 2026-27 and he is eligible for a rookie-scale extension until the eve of the season; Marc Stein has reported Presti wants to get both Wallace and Mitchell locked up across this offseason and next. That, more than any free agent, is what the Dort savings were for.

Training camp opens in late September. The preseason is a two-game formality: New Orleans at Tulsa's BOK Center on October 6, then a trip to Atlanta on October 12 that will double as a Dort reunion. Emirates NBA Cup group play starts October 30, with Oklahoma City drawn into West Group B alongside Minnesota, the Clippers, New Orleans and Memphis, and the Cup final set for December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse. All-Star Weekend is February 19-21 in Phoenix.

Follow Oklahoma City Thunder news through August and the theme will not change: a top-heavy roster, a very deep pile of second-round picks, and one roster spot the front office would still like to fill with someone who can shoot. They lost that particular race to Denver. Given how many 3-point shots this team is going to need next spring, it is worth watching whether they run another one.