Westbrook’s future next hurdle for OKC with Durant leaving

If you’re the Thunder, do you listen to a deal of Bradley, Jerebko, Brown, and the Nets’ first-round pick in 2018? But with the departure of superstar Kevin Durant in free agency, the Thunder’s future now looks a lot less promising.

They tried to remedy that by making a realistic bid to land Kevin Durant, but with the superstar forward choosing the Golden State Warriors, the Celtics find themselves in a hole. I believe that in 3-5 years the Thunder will be a Finals contender again, but as of right now no.

There are several issues with “Westbrook to the Celtics”, however.

Now the Los Angeles Lakers are in the process of developing young players, who are the core of the team, who also have great athleticism and talent.

According to Spotrac, the Lakers have $76 million in active contracts, with cap max space of $25.3 million. Obviously Kanter will need to live up to his contract but other than his playoff struggles, I have been relatively happy with him.

The biggest free agent on the market made his priorities clear.

The Boston Celtics have been one of the more busy teams in the National Basketball Association this off-season as they try to get big names to continue their resurgence as a strong team in the league.

Applying fivethirtyeight.com’s CARMELO aglorithm, signing Westbrook would be a steal. It will most likely take three to five years like I said earlier. The King, Lebron James, had left his throne to travel to Miami and unite with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.

For now, no negotiation is going on between the Lakers and the Thunder. Dishing Westbrook for Russell and Randle, in combination with a few solid role players and draft picks, would give OKC young talent that could help them start fresh and rebuild, while also providing the Lakers with a top tier guard, who with a little more help, could lead them all the way to a championship. And yes, if he came to Oklahoma City, people may just end up calling him a knuckle – drop the head – because Westbrook may end up ripping his actual skull off. The suggestion that, even if Durant returned to OKC for one season and the Thunder won the title, Westbrook might still leave in free agency wasn’t out of the question.

Nonetheless, teams such as the Hawks will at least think about trading for a player like Westbrook. Following the news was a wave of worries about retaining Russell Westbrook before he can ditch OKC next year as an unrestricted free agent.

With Los Angeles now owning roughly that much space, and likely willing to part with players like Williams, Young, and Randle in order to make the contracts match in a potential swap with the Thunder, a deal is possible at some point in the future.

There’s nearly no chance that he returns to Oklahoma City -€” not now that Kevin Durant is a member of the Golden State Warriors and the Thunder are no longer title contenders.