NBA teams
NBA Front Office 9y

How the Thunder win without KD

NBA, Oklahoma City Thunder

Tom Penn (general manager), George Karl (coach), Amin Elhassan (scouting director), Chad Ford (assistant GM), David Thorpe (senior consultant) and Kevin Pelton (analytics director) simulate conversations that an actual front office might have about particular topics. Today, the group becomes the Oklahoma City Thunder front office. How do they survive without Kevin Durant? Want in on the conversation? Use #NBAFrontOffice.



Tom Penn: So Kevin Durant is out until at least December. We're the Oklahoma City Thunder front office. What do we do?

David Thorpe: Tom, There's no rush. This should be something Durant can come back from and never think about again. So you can't make a misstep here. It's ridiculous to think that we have to get this guy back. This is an athlete you're trying to ensure stays in Oklahoma City for the rest of his career, which of course to me is the most important subtext of this entire situation: What can we do to make sure this guy knows we think about him before we think about anything else? We know teams will be going after him when he's a free agent. We're talking about one of the two best players in the world and he'll be that for a while.

Penn: David, you raise a good point. We should be very conservative. But this is a hard one, guys, because you sort of have to err on the side of caution. You want to lean on your experts, but you've got to get multiple opinions and then try to make a cautious judgment for the health of your players. So with that as a preface, how do we -- the Oklahoma City Thunder -- live without Kevin Durant?

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