The Thunder issued a press release to let everyone they'd agreed to a multi-year extension with Thabo.
PG/SG- Russell Westbrook. Clearly gonna be a big minute player, but maybe as a PG. Still seems like a combo guard to me though. SG- James Harden. Clearly gonna be a big minute player. SF- Kevin Durant. Clearly a big minute player SF/PF- Jeff Green. Pretty good player, more a 3 than a 4. Anyway, my point is that if you go through their options on the wings, there's really, at best, about 12 minutes a game you'd want Thabo playing. Does it make sense to be locking in a guy at any sort of price to play 12 minutes a game?
Thabo earned nearly 3x those minutes in their game 1. You mentioned 4 guys. If you add in 2 bigs (in addition to Green) and if your evaluation is correct, and all their other guys pan out, worse case is they are increadily stacked and Thabo is their 7th man. It's not a huge overpayment even in that scenerio. And maybe they like Thabo more than that anyway.
Just as a for instance, Nocioni is going to cost more over the next 2 years than Thabo is going to cost in 4 years. And Chris Wilcox got $3M a year this summer for 2 years. Donte Jones got almost that much for 4 years.
Jones is terrible. Wilcox is a pretty comparable signing, but I think 2 years instead of 4 is about right. My thinking is why lock yourself in long term to a guy that you don't figure to play big minutes. To say that his deal is better than Nocioni's was is certainly damning it with faint praise Maybe they plan to dangle Green to get themselves a big man? I dunno, but from what I can tell, guys with longer term deals, even if they aren't that huge, aren't exactly in high demand.
I was mostly playing devil's advocate. I'm not a big fan of locking in 5th options until you have a 1st and 2nd option locked in. But that contract is CHEAP!
You also need somebody on the floor who is going to pass. Durant and Westbrook and probably Harden are all shooters. Somebody needs to play defense and pass. He played 31 minutes against the pistons last night and only took 4 shots. ~3 million/year for a glue guy who can do those things is a decent deal if you've got the guys ahead of him.
http://lite.newsok.com/?p=193042 Nice article on thabo. Durant calls him the "heart and soul" of their D. His coach is very complimentory as well.
From what I've seen, Thabo is starting and getting 30 minutes a game. The downside of what he brings is the 6 PPG, 3 RPG, and 1 APG in those minutes. OKC has some fine offensive players, yet they're 4th from the bottom in scoring. Is the defense helping them? They're #2 in the league behind the Celtics. It's good for a 2-1 record.
