The Oklahoma City Thunder has stockpiled plenty of talent during its rebuild. This is on top of Sam Presti and the team acquiring a war chest of draft assets and future picks in both the first and second rounds.
At the beginning of the rebuild, this resulted in a revolving door of young talents, but, now, there is beginning to be more continuity on the roster. For the first time of the rebuild, the team's main core will have already played with each other a season ago.
The benefit of how the team was built is that the team now has plenty of quality depth.
Looking at the Denver Nuggets -- the reigning NBA champions -- their team was built uniquely. Obviously, they took the long road. They built through the draft and made trades with long-term plans in their mind. This led to them having a roster with parity to compete with.
The Thunder has the opportunity to emulate a similar mold to the Nuggets championship-winning team. The young core of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren all have incredibly high potential and will provide the star power needed to compete.
Looking further down the roster, having specialists and players able to star in their roles will be huge when it comes to competing. Bruce Brown and Aaron Gordon are great examples of this and the benefit they provided to a team that was able to win it all.
The Thunder, for the first time in its rebuild, had a showing of that last season. Isaiah Joe immediately stood out as a sharpshooter. He and Lindy Waters III would often be used in lineups that most needed spacing. Aaron Wiggins is another example, as he is a player doing a little bit of everything to contribute to winning.
It's no secret the Thunder have the star power at the top of the roster developing to the level the team needs to compete at the highest, level, but finding more players that can star in their role will be huge as the team continues to develop.
Obviously, there will be more parity over the top talents on the squad, whereas the Nuggets rely more on Nikola Jokic than they do Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr., but ultimately finding players to star in their roles will unlock the next level of play for the team.
Sure, it helps that both teams are small market teams. Not being able to go out and sign whatever free agent prospect they want isn't exactly a positive thing. But getting to develop long-term talent, build a system and spend roster building focus on getting role players that perfectly play into the system makes for fun basketball and a great potential title run.
More must-reads: