The Thunder exercised their 2022/23 contract options for forwards Darius Bazley and Aleksej Pokusevski and guard Ty Jerome, the team announced in a press release.
There was nothing surprising about the rebuilding club with a good cap situation securing the rights to three young players through next season.
Bazley has appeared in 119 career games, including 67 starts, and was fourth on the team in scoring (13.7 PPG) and second in rebounding (7.2 RPG) last season. He’s due to make approximately $4.265MM next season.
In 48 games with Oklahoma City last season, Pokusevski averaged 7.9 PPG, 4.6 RPG and 2.1 APG in 23.5 MPG. He’ll take in approximately $3.26MM in 2022/23.
In 33 games with the Thunder last season after being acquired from the Suns, Jerome averaged 10.7 PPG and 3.6 APG. He’ll received $4.22MM in guaranteed money next season.
Poku is a future star & Bazley is gonna be pretty good as well… don’t see much the point of Jerome, right?
Giddey is a star in the making. Bazley? Possibly. Pok? OKC is only keeping him to trade him to replenish its underwhelming supply of first-round picks.
Of course Giddey is gonna be a star, he was a steal in the draft at #6… just didn’t mention his as the article wasn’t about him!
Pokusevski is not even close to a future star. Potential solid role player/fringe starter? Sure.
But last year, albeit his rookie season, he had a PER of 6.18 which ranked 366th of 372 players who qualified last year. His shooting percentage is horrible which is okay if you are a rookie working on taking good shots, but I watched him multiple times last season and he struggles to hit the wide open ones. He is also very slow, a poor decision maker, and poor rebounder. This year he is already off to a bad start. Yes, he has many years to grow and yes stars can develop from horrible players, but there is nothing that shows stardom in him other than he is 7’0 and can play SF. But like Jonathan Benders career, that meant nothing.
He has made some nifty moves and had sown good steals and assist. His shot does need work.
Not much star power in OKC these days since losing all three of their MVP’s. The closest thing to a future star for them right now is SGA, even that may be a reach.
Whatevs