Sam Amick

In my backyard, I'll use the Kings as a good example.

I'm really curious to see what they do because if they felt closer to being competitive, then maybe they're willing to, you know, move one of their core guys, whether it's Tamada Sabonis or Zach Levine with a pick attached to get, you know, like Levine, for example, like he's very hard to move.

Well, they have zero interest in attaching a pick because they need to think about their future.

And you have to like, again, you have to think about a longer timeline.

I think a world exists where a player like that.

And this example applies to a lot of teams where, all right, we have two high price years left.

with this particular player?

Are we going to be desperate to get him off our books and compromise some of our other kind of building tools in the process?

Or will we be very patient and just let him come off the books naturally after next season?

Those are the types of questions that, to some degree, are impacted by the Thunder's dominance.

And it's not the case for everybody.

I wrote this today.

shameless plug dave had a lot of fun doing our front office rankings at the athletic we do it every year it's the second time we've done it um and not surprisingly okc was at the top but i wrote about the rockets for example and how their legacy is interesting you know rafael stone their gm worked under daryl morey previously before daryl went to philly um and this rockets team

in this group is doing a similar thing to what they did a decade ago when they were one of the only teams that was actually coming for the neck, so to speak, of the reigning champion.

And it was the the Warriors back then with the Rockets trying to take them off their throne.

And now, you know, it's the Rockets going after the Thunder because, you know, they went out and got KD.

They'd been aggressive.

So the chilling effect doesn't apply to everybody.

But unless you are a Houston or a Denver or a New York team,

or one of these teams near the top, you know, I think you start second guessing the strategy here a bit.