Last season, a total of 11 players gave the Oklahoma City Thunder at least 900 minutes of service. Three of those players now play for other teams: Lu Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe. Two of them, Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace, have already suffered injuries that may end their seasons.
Another, Alex Caruso, has a sprained ankle. For Wednesday's game against the Dallas Mavericks, Chet Holmgren is also out with right knee patellar tendinitis and Ajay Mitchell is questionable with a right ankle sprain. In other words, most of Oklahoma City's core rotation from a year ago, aside from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, is not available right now.
Inevitably, that has sparked quite a bit of speculation. The Thunder are as asset-rich as any team in the NBA. They have the picks to go trade for a difference-maker and a roster spot to add a free agent.
The question here is who, and on Wednesday, ESPN's Brian Windhorst stirred the pot with an intentionally cryptic rumor. "And this is one thing that I've talked to executives about, and I don't mean to be cryptic, but I'm being cryptic," he said on his Hoop Collective podcast. "If you're going to, if they're going to acquire a player, it would not be a surprise if they acquire a player they've already had." This makes plenty of sense on paper.
The Thunder are very particular about their culture. Bringing in someone new is far riskier than reacquiring someone they already know, and given their asset surplus, they can afford to be picky. Given Windhorst's track record of cryptic reporting leading to seismic transactions, let's take a look around the league to see which former Thunder players, if any, make sense as reacquisition targets.
The Thunder traded Dort, Joe and Wiggins last offseason. Given how things have played out, Oklahoma City may regret doing so, and given this rumor cycle, fans will inevitably call for them to try to reacquire one of last season's core pieces. Alas, Dort, Joe and Wiggins are functionally not obtainable to the Thunder.
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