What Happened
Every champion feels like a budding dynasty in the moment, yet we're about to crown our eighth different champion in eight years after the Oklahoma City Thunder dropped Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals at home to the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night. The collective bargaining agreement eventually comes for everyone, and the Thunder are about to experience the same.
The 2023 Denver Nuggets lost key reserves Bruce Brown and Jeff Green, and the n Kentavious Caldwell-Pope a year later. The 2024 Boston Celtics kept the ir roster together for another year, but traded away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis while losing Al Horford and Luke Kornet to free agency for the sake of avoiding the second apron.
The 2025 Thunder were as well-positioned to keep the ir team together as any recent champion has been. That was the benefit of having two All-Stars in Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams on rookie deals. But the bill always comes due. It's what made this year's loss to the Spurs so devastating. This was Oklahoma City's last cheap season.
Why It Matters
The Thunder had the NBA 's 19th-highest payroll in the ir championship season, according to Spotrac. The y ranked 13th this season. At this moment, the Thunder are set to spend around $28 million more than any other team... with out including the ir draft picks.
Things only get harder for the 2027-28 campaign, when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander 's supermax extension kicks in, along with a possible rookie extension for Cason Wallace. The Thunder have spent years preparing for this moment. The y're about as well-insulated against the effects of the aprons as any team reasonably could be. But decision time has officially arrived.
Oklahoma City is no longer positioned to keep everyone. So let's look at the ir finances and attempt to figure out where the cuts are coming. When you include the ir two first-round draft picks, No. 12 and No. 17, the Thunder are projected to be $39 million above the second apron for next season. Now, this raises our first substantial question: is the second apron an unofficial hard cap for the Thunder?
What Comes Next
Most of the second apron's restrictions relate to adding players externally. Well, the Thunder probably don't think the y need to add any big-name players externally. The y've won 132 regular-season games over the past two years. The y have a championship-caliber roster already. Going above the second apron freezes draft picks, but draft pick consequences are mostly irrelevant to the Thunder.
The y've accumulated such a draft surplus and have so many paths to adding more picks in the future that frozen picks, or even picks moved to the end of the first round (a consequence for spending three years out of five over the second apron), just won't hurt the m that badly. Nonetheless, I'd expect the Thunder to treat the second apron as a hard cap for this season because of what's coming a few years down the line.
The current collective bargaining agreement has an opt-out clause after the 2028-29 season. The NBA is certainly operating as though a lot is going to change after that, given that it included a 2029 sunset provision in its reformed draft lottery. Next year will be Oklahoma City's first year of this era paying the luxury tax. You get three tax years before the now extremely punitive repeater tax kicks in.