Sam Presti just moved Lu Dort to Atlanta in a three-team deal, collected seven second-round picks this offseason, shed $224 million in combined payroll and luxury tax exposure, and kept Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, and Jalen Williams exactly where they were — and every person who spent two years telling you the second apron would eventually break Oklahoma City owes the rest of us an apology.
Per Shams Charania at ESPN, the Thunder sent Dort to the Hawks while Zaccharie Risacher — the 2024 No. 1 overall pick — moved from Atlanta to Dallas, and Ryan Nembhard landed in Atlanta to close the loop. OKC’s haul: Chicago’s 2027 second-rounder via Dallas, Atlanta’s most favorable picks in 2031 and 2032, and a $17.7 million trade exception. Presti didn’t lose a star. He got paid to leave.
https://x.com/ShamsCharania/status/2078872490328178830
The second apron was supposed to be the kill switch. The NBA built it specifically to make roster management brutal for teams that went deep into the tax — you can’t aggregate contracts in trades, you can’t use the mid-level exception the same way, player movement gets restricted. The whole point was to make dynasties expensive enough to be unsustainable. Presti looked at the rulebook and found every exit before anyone realized he was already through the door.
Dort was $17.72 million for one more year and then an unrestricted free agent. Good player. Defensive-minded wing who averaged 8.3 points and shot 38.5 percent last season. You’re not crying about losing him when your core is intact and you’re now comfortably below the apron. Presti didn’t gut anything. He cleaned the books and came out with assets.
This is the part where I’m supposed to torch everyone who doubted OKC. But I do this for a living — I watch three screens while Revis chews my couch and I still didn’t think Presti could navigate this cleanly. The man is operating on a different frequency. While the rest of the NBA offseason is playing checkers (and LeBron’s offseason drama is eating the whole news cycle), Presti is somewhere quietly solving a constraint optimization problem most front offices can’t even read.
The one thing that’s genuinely complicated here: Risacher averaged 11.1 points over his first two seasons and saw his playoff minutes crater. The Hawks got younger and more athletic. Dallas gets a lottery-pick talent on a rookie deal. Atlanta’s side of this trade is not a joke, and if Risacher figures it out alongside Trae Young, this looks a lot different in three years. The deal worked for OKC today — that doesn’t mean every other team lost.
But today isn’t three years from now. Today, Shai is still in Oklahoma City. Holmgren is still in Oklahoma City. Jalen Williams is still in Oklahoma City. They’re below the apron. They have picks stacking up through 2032. The system that was supposed to eventually force a painful choice between the core and the cap sheet just got dismantled piece by piece, and Presti didn’t break a sweat doing it.
The ceiling on this Thunder team just went up, not down. Sit with that.
