A Thunderous Low

A closer look at the Oklahoma City Thunder's historically low payroll

Salary data credit: Hoops Hype

The Oklahoma City Thunder made news recently when they lost to the Memphis Grizzlies 152-79, the most lopsided game in NBA history. And while being on the wrong side of history isn’t something to be proud of, one starts to have a little more sympathy for them when you consider the Thunder have the lowest payroll in the league. By far.

At a “mere” $79.1 million, the Thunder’s payroll is almost a third less than the league’s second lowest payroll, belonging to those aforementioned Grizzlies. The difference in salary between the Thunder and Grizzlies is larger than the gap between the Grizzlies and the league’s 7th highest payroll, the Utah Jazz.

In fact, the Thunder are the only team this year with a payroll under the salary cap.

This number isn’t just low compared to the rest of today’s league - it’s historically low. They have the league’s lowest payroll since the 2016-17 cap spike, and the salary cap has been steadily increasing since then.

As a proportion of the league cap, the Thunder’s payroll is the lowest figure since at least the 2006-07 season.¹

But just three seasons ago, the Thunder had the highest salary in the league:

Here’s a little animation showing how the Thunder’s payroll has decreased over the last three seasons:

The Future

As the league’s current payroll distribution hints at, most teams in the league now are built to contend - there are 25 teams within 2 games of the play-in game as I write this on December 17th. It’s a climate which makes rebuilding even more of a fertile strategy, as evidenced by the ridiculous stash of draft picks the Thunder and GM Sam Presti have recently accumulated.

The last time Presti had such valuable draft assets, he struck absolute gold by selecting Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden in back-to-back-to-back drafts.

Let’s see what he does now.

1. 2006-07 is the last season I collected data for using HoopsHype salary data.