Hello and welcome the Game Theory podcast.

I'm your San Vassini.

It's our offseason preview series where we break down the forthcoming summers for every NBA team.

And today in the second half of conference finalists week, it is the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Thunder dealt with an immense number of injuries in the playoffs from A.J. Mitchell to J.

William Williams. They ultimately were eliminated by San Antonio Spurs in game seven.

They lost to a 60 win team in game seven a year after winning the NBA title. I do think that this

conversation has a bit of a different tenor than the Cavs conversation because this Thunder team

is incredibly

close. They have Jaylon Williams and AJ Mitchell returning next season in a way that they didn't

have in the playoffs, but they're about to get drastically more expensive, Bryce. And my guess is

that we see some changes, particularly at the fringes of the roster.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a different conversation than I thought we would be having when the season started,

back when they were 24 and 1 or whatever, and it seemed inevitable that they were going to

repeat as NBA champs and could anybody beat them?

And, you know, it happened.

And so now there's some different conversations around does the, I think it's more so

like we see how good the San Antonio Spurs are and, you know, theoretically just going to keep

getting better.

And at time of recording, they haven't won the NBA finals yet either.

There may be a team in the East that goes ahead and wins the NBA championship this year

...