The Oklahoma City Thunder certainly need all the help that they can get if they would want to attempt to scale the summit that is known as the Western Conference’s elite. Of course, if you have ambition, that is one thing -- but you would also need to have the tools of the job in order to get things done, and that is the reason why the Oklahoma City Thunder are looking into players from other teams, hoping that they will be able to augment and reinforce positions to turn them into a winning team. This has ensured that Paul George of the Indiana Pacers have now come under the radar of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The whole point of nabbing Paul George from the Indiana Pacers would be to ensure that the vacuum left by Kevin Durant over the course of the NBA free agency will be filled. Of course, this is but a rumor at the moment, and there has been no confirmed offers made by Oklahoma City Thunder just yet in terms of trying to obtain Paul George’s signature on the dotted line, but this does not detract from the fact that there is an urgent need for reinforcements over in Oklahoma City to shore up their ambitions.
At point of publishing, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s ace up their sleeve is only one -- and he is none other than Russell , being the only player with the calibre of creating match winning moments. In a nutshell, Westbrook’s performances have averaged a triple-double after five games into the season. On paper, the Thunder are doing pretty all right with a 4-1 record, although the cracks showed themselves in the loss to the Golden State Warriors. Basically, as long as Russell Westbrook plays well, the Thunder will march onward, but when Westbrook starts to struggle, the entire team will follow suit. Placing all of your eggs in a single basket is considered to be suicidal, and so, it would not make much sense at all for the Oklahoma City Thunder to rely on Westbrook alone throughout the entire season.
Needless to say, a trade between Thunder and the Indiana Pacers would be ideal for the former. After all, the Pacers are not too keen to drop their best player, not when they themselves are struggling, but there is a bargaining chip that the Thunder could use in order to lure the Pacers to make a trade: the promise of youth. The Thunder have what many consider as one of the NBA’s most promising frontcourts, Steven Adams. Adams signed a long term contract extension recently, and this would certainly cost a lot for anyone to pry him from Thunder.
Perhaps offering Enis Kanter, Kyle Singler, Cameron Payne, as well as draft picks be the ideal package for the Pacers to release their grip on Paul George, but even so, that might not be enough of a sweet deal. After all, the Pacers too, have their own problems to look into, and would like to make sure that they build a team around their star player, and not the other way around.
