Get the dominoes out

The offseason starts to fall into place for the Thunder and Kings.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Approaching Thunder Storm; Martin Johnson Heade; 1859

The Thunder charitably had some items to attend to this summer after a stunning rise up the standings to No. 1 in the West followed by a second-round ejection at the hands of Luka Doncic and the Mavericks. That whole list, according to me:

• Resolve the Josh Giddey issue, likely through a trade

• Add some more size, either to play alongside Chet Holmgren or back him up

• Add more high-end depth, likely through trading Giddey and/or draft capital

Oklahoma City addressed two of those issues in one fell swoop by reportedly trading Giddey to the Bulls for Alex Caruso straight-up. Caruso (30) is much older than Giddey (21), and is a better player right now (maybe by a lot). He’ll soon be a little pricey, too, as he’s hitting unrestricted free agency in a year. Giddey will be a restricted free agent in 2025; they honestly could end up at similar salary levels, depending on how the Bulls do.

Caruso is definitely a rotational player for OKC. I think he starts off the bench, which means the Thunder probably have a starting slot to fill. By Game 5 of the Dallas series, Mark Daigneault had turned to Isaiah Joe over Giddey. Joe is nice — the Joe-Caruso bench mob is going to be a treat — but Bullet #2 above reminds us that the Thunder likely need some size with Holmgren. Jaylin Williams probably is not it, and playing Lu Dort and Jalen Williams as your forwards really puts a ton of pressure on Holmgren. So the Thunder are quite possibly still searching for a fifth starter.

For the Bulls, unless you are totally out on Giddey — which is a fair position to take, I’m not sure he’s a good NBA player — it’s not a bad thing to turn a 30-year-old pending UFA into a 21-year-old pending RFA, especially given Giddey’s one primary strength (playmaking from a non-traditional position) and the Bulls’ biggest weakness (passing). You can grouse about whether Chicago could have collected more assets dealing Caruso at the trade deadline, but this trade was almost assuredly not available then and the Bulls deserve some credit for signing Caruso outright three years ago, setting up this next domino.

Free DeMar DeRozan, though.

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Malik Is Arabic For King

That sounds you hear is an enormous sign of relief from the entire Sacramento River Valley as Malik Monk signed a 4-year, $78 million extension with the Kings. This was the max that the Kings were contractually allowed to offer, and less than some other teams needing guard help were expected to shell out. Kings fans have been collectively worrying about Monk’s future with the team because of this contractual anomaly since basically last offseason. To have it resolved in the first 48 hours of the offseason is a miracle.