OKC Thunder Draft Recap: More Trades And International Focus

After making two major trades over the course of this week, the Oklahoma City Thunder continued to be extremely active on draft day.

Just hours before the draft, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that the Thunder traded recently acquired Danny Green as well as Terrance Ferguson to the Philadelphia 76ers for Al Horford, the rights to Vasilije Micic, a 2025 protected first round pick, and the 34th pick in this year’s draft. 

This set Oklahoma City up with four picks heading into the draft, with No. 25, No. 28, No. 34, and No. 53 in their possession.

With this in mind, many wondered what the Thunder might do to ensure they were able to select Aleksej Pokusevski, whom they were reported to have made a draft promise to. Would they have to package some of their picks to move up in the draft?

Just before the Minnesota Timberwolves were set to select with pick No. 17, Sam Presti swooped in to acquire this pick in exchange for newly acquired Ricky Rubio as well as the No. 25 and No. 28 picks. While there will likely be more included in the deal to make salaries match, the details have not been announced. James Johnson could be a likely candidate for Minnesota to include in the deal.

With this newly acquired pick, the Thunder took Pokusevski and fulfilled their reported draft promise. Still just 18 years old, he is extremely long, standing at 7-feet tall and weighing and 195 pounds. While he would need to add some weight to his frame to be playable in the NBA, he is one of the most unique players in the entire 2020 class.

From there, the Thunder would select two more foreign prospects. For starters, they took Theo Maledon with the No. 34 pick. Maledon is a 19-year-old French point guard who played for ASVEL of the LNB Pro A last season. Next, they traded their No. 53 pick and additional assets to be named later for the No. 37 pick, which was owned by the Washington Wizards. With this pick, they took Vit Krejci, who is a 20-year-old Czech guard that spent last season playing for Casademont Zaragoza of the Liga ACB.

There was certainly a trend on draft night for Presti and the Thunder, as they acquired three international prospects through the draft and acquired the rights to another foreign player in Micic in the Philadelphia deal. It’s been made clear that Oklahoma City is willing to take the risk on players like this who could end up being longer term projects but have the potential to be high-value picks.

After the draft concluded, the Thunder got to work on targeting undrafted free agents, where they had success signing Lu Dort last year. According to Jake Weingarten, Oklahoma City signed Josh Hall, who was five-star and four-star recruit and former NC State commit who decided to skip college and go straight to the NBA. These types of guys seem to interest Presti, as Darius Bazley and Jalen Lecque of the Thunder followed a similar path.

Looking ahead, the Thunder will potentially still look to flip the contracts of both Kelly Oubre and Al Horford who were acquired this week via trade. The 2020-21 season is set to kick of on December 22.