Is it Too Late for Ousmane Dieng to Save his OKC Thunder Future?

Oklahoma City doesn’t have much to worry about this offseason, but next season will determine one player’s future.

After winning the team’s first NBA title last season, the Thunder have decided to effectively run back the same roster for 2025-26. Considering the Thunder are again the title favorites heading into next season, there isn’t much they have to worry about from a roster-building perspective until the summer of 2026.

While next season’s performances likely won’t have much impact on how the Thunder choose to handle most players, it will make or break Ousmane Dieng’s future with the team and in the NBA. Of course, there’s a chance it’s already too late for Dieng to carve out a future beyond 2026 in Oklahoma City.

Entering next season, the Thunder project to have 14 players who will get a legitimate opportunity to work their way into the lineup. Dieng would be the 15th standard contract in that equation, putting him in a position where he has almost no shot of making it into the rotation.

While there’s certainly a chance the Thunder’s two-way players get more opportunities than him as well, Dieng at least has one thing on his side. Standing at 6-foot-10, Dieng’s build as a larger forward is something the Thunder could still use, so his unique play type and size should at least warrant a look from Mark Daigneault.

Last season, Dieng played in only 37 games, putting up 3.8 points and 2.2 rebounds in just under 11 minutes a night. As the former lottery pick enters the final year of his rookie deal, it’s hard not to draw comparisons to Aleksej Pokusevski’s situation entering the 2023-24 season.

Entering that year, the 2020 first-round pick was also in the final season of his rookie deal and had fallen out of the lineup almost entirely as the team became competitive. While Dieng didn’t get the luxury of playing on bad teams like Pokusevski, neither truly showed an ability to contribute to a winning team consistently at the NBA level through three seasons.

Of course, Pokusevski failed to make his mark in year four in Oklahoma City and was waived not long after the trade deadline. Considering the Thunder might want to convert a two-way guy to a standard deal or even try their luck in the buyout market, Dieng has to come into next season with an urgency he hasn’t shown up to this point.

If he can work his way into the rotation and even make a case in the first couple of months that he could be a playoff contributor, Dieng might be able to stick around. However, if the Thunder get to midseason and can’t see the former lottery pick being a key part of another championship run, Dieng’s time in Oklahoma City will almost certainly end at some point next season.