For a long time, as Oklahoma City developed into more and more of a blank canvas in the aftermath of trading away Paul George, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul and Al Horford, among others, the running joke was that the rebuilding Thunder were concerned only with stockpiling and owning as many future first-round picks as possible. That the club tucked away its eventual draft-lottery envelopes at night under a blanket in a queen-sized bed. And so on and so on.
But the reality now, as we near the end of the 2022 calendar year, is that those one-time inanimate mystery boxes are beginning to sprout and bear real, tangible fruit in the form of drives, floaters and spacing.