We Just Learned WHY the Thunder Made This Trade...

Before this new season began, no one would have thought the Thunder of all teams would make the first trade of the NBA season, but considering where things have gone, going out and getting a guy that you originally drafted a year and a half ago in Nick Clifford from the Sacramento Kings makes a great deal of sense. We're going to go into all the motivations for this trade, what we've learned a day later, and why Sam Presti decided now is the right time to pull the trigger on what has been a very uncharted season. You get reports that come out that say the Thunder are the first team since the 1950s to have three starters get injured in the same game and have to miss two-plus months of time. You may be without Kasen and J-Dub for the entire year, but the Thunder somehow, someway, just keep on winning. And people around the league are thinking, how does this team keep getting away with this? Second in the West right now, you're in the midst of a four-game win streak. They'll go on the road to face the Portland Trail Blazers late on Tuesday night. Spoiler alert for all you out there, I will do a live stream for that game. Our schedule got shifted around a little bit. I forgot I had a wedding to do on Saturday that I went to. Had to cancel that live stream. I'm going to go live for this Trailblazers game on Tuesday night, just in case that ends up being the Nick Clifford debut. But we've already gotten some of our opinions from the league-wide sources after this trade has been done. Earlier today, Brian Windhorst talking about the obvious parallels of why this trade made sense. You get a pretty cheap price on a guy that you literally use a draft pick on a year and a half ago. You give two second round picks. The Thunder drafted him with a 24th overall pick in the 25 draft. They traded him away after the pick was taken to the Kings, who offered them the Spurs first round pick that they owned. So the Thunder got a first round pick, and then a year later, they got Nick Clifford anyway. And all they had to do was give up two second round picks. This is the type of 4D chess move that Sam Presti is known for. And when he finds a guy that he likes, he sticks with him and finds any way that he can get him. Chandler Parsons added to this as well on his podcast. This is the most Kings thing ever. Like what in the actual hell? Kudos Sam Presti did it again. And Kings, you are silly. They gave up on a young player that has a lot of talent. And the Thunder made this deal happen right away in the season. And obviously this tells us... That the Thunder felt that they needed a guy like Nick Clifford right now. And another thing as well that I added on yesterday in our immediate reaction video is that this to me feels like the Thunder's 2026-27 season version of the Jared McCain trade. A young player in their second year who has literally just been left for dead by the franchise that they're on in the 76ers. And they think, oh, the dude just can't play. Well, dude, he was literally a finalist. Like, he would have been a finalist for the rookie of the year. Jared McCain would have. Had he not gotten injured early in the year, and they just never let him back into the full-time rotation, you think, oh, when they let him play, he stunk. Well, yeah, because you gave up on him. So when he's going to play, his heart's not going to be in it. His confidence is going to be shaken. He's playing in a system that he knows does not want him. I see the same thing happening with Nick Clifford in Sacramento. They cut his minutes like crazy this year. He's going to come to OKC as a guy off the end of the bench, and I think he's going to thrive. Without a doubt, I think that this dude is going to thrive, and I see this being Jared McCain at 2.0. Sam Presti moved quickly, which tells me that he's going all in on this, and by this, I specifically mean the Thunder feeling like they want to go out and get as much NBA help as they can on the end of the bench instead of having to rely on guys like Barnheiser and Dix, and they want to go get anything that they possibly could need for the cheapest The deepest price possible. Kind of the inputs to outputs of how little can we spend with the most impact coming back to go all in on trying to win another championship this year. You signed Micah Peavy, heavy part of the rotation now. You signed Dale and Terry. You cut Dale and Terry. And you buy low on a player that you loved literally two draft cycles ago. And the Thunder made this move very, very quickly. And they chose Nick Clifford for first and foremost. Because they liked him so much in the pre-draft a couple years ago, obviously a bunch of different workouts that he did with the team, a bunch of interviews, and you liked what he had coming out of Colorado State as a player, but then also you have a full season sample size, 75 games of his rookie year, which was some really good quality stuff. Now his efficiency as a shooter was not there, but his intangibles... His defense and his impact in his minutes was very, very good on a bad team, and good teams can, they tend to, I'm trying to think how I want to say this, good teams tend to over-emphasize the good qualities in a player. Like, they make the good look that much better, and they make the bad feel a little bit less significant, and I see the Thunder doing that right now with Nick Clifford, And you see the drop off in the minutes that they've given him. Literally in the last five games, 5.2 minutes a game, they had given up on the dude entirely. And the Thunder were not the only team that had expressed interest. The Thunder had to also move quickly in this because several of their immediate competitors in the Western Conference had sent out waivers on him to see if they could make a trade. The Lakers and the Nuggets, we already know, expressed interest in Neat Clifford. And he was available, again, because the Kings... Just decided that they didn't want him anymore. Doug Christie said that, nope, we pretty much have no spot for him in our rotation. And a new role is going to give OKC something that they can use. And Sam Presti never makes rash decisions. If there's anything that Sam Presti is, he's a lot of things, but overreactionary is not one of them. This dude is calculated. This dude projects five moves into the future at all times. And you scout Nick endlessly in 25, you get all the games of rookie film. You draft him initially, and it's almost like you put a free draft pick on layaway when you think about it. Like, you draft the dude, you trade him for a first-round pick, and then you have to use a couple seconds, literally a year and a half later, to go get him back. It's like a break glass in case of emergency type of thing. And so, kind of to wrap up this video, the obvious mentality here is that the Thunder are unsurprisingly going all-in. Thunder needed a week, a week and a half, to let all the dust settle after that traumatic night a couple Sundays ago against the Clippers. And since then, you've seen this team reform its identity that it has always hung its hat on. Led by SGA, you've got to win games a little bit differently now, but you are still dominating. You've won four straight games. So you have to weigh all of your options on how you can make this team better. Without going over the second apron, the Thunder used the Aaron Wiggins trade exception that they got earlier this summer, and the salary for Neek Clifford still keeps this team at $3.5 million below the second apron. You've got multiple years of control, which is great because the Thunder now have a lot of different options on players that they have for a couple years for very cheap salaries. The Thunder desperately needed someone that can help cover the minutes of J-Dub and Cason, give you some impact, give a bit of a diverse skill set. And give you time to evaluate the fit long term. Nick Clifford literally gives you all of those things. In the way that he plays, I think he's going to fit in perfectly with this team. He's a primary slasher that gets to the rim. And the Thunder, obviously, they play an inside-out kind of game. But when he does shoot the three, most of it comes from above the break. And defensively, he is a good defender. He's good at contesting shots. He's a good havoc defender as well. It's only going to get better in a stout defensive system, and when you phase him in, I'm really excited about what this is going to do with your immediate bench help, covering the Dixon-Barnheiser minutes, hopefully making those guys as least impactful as possible in that rotation, defending the two to the four, creating the looks, driving to the basket, all the things that I think he loves. And the last thing here, just a little thing I'm throwing in. This is, again, nothing concrete. This is just me speaking here. A trade like this, where you felt like you needed somebody at the 15th man spot that can play immediately, I've got a feeling the Thunder may not be counting on immediate help from Thomas Sorber anytime soon. I mean, the dude is on month four of what was supposed to be a four-week recovery on his arthroscopic knee surgery. We still have heard nothing about when he may return. I've just got a hunch that the Thunder may not be counting on some help from Thomas Sorber anytime soon. And that's why you feel like you got to go make a trade on a guy like Nick Clifford, Micah Peavy absorbing some of those wing minutes. Fewer minutes from your two-way guys. That's just a rotation read on my end, kind of in this video, not a true update because again, I don't really know. But the Thunder still try to maximize those championship odds. And according to Kalshi right now, they are the second in the West in championship odds, at least going to the NBA finals from the Western Conference. Really good value on this right now on Kalshi. Go click the link in the description, put in Digest NBA with our sponsor Kalshi here today, who is also the official partner of the NBA. When you do that, you'll get $55 in bonus funds on your first $25 trade that you put in on the app. It'll work on all sports, anything in the future, all sorts of fun stuff in there to check out on the NBA, NFL world, college football world, all the other sports. They've also got news, they've got pop culture, music, all the other things. As we wrap up today's video, I want you to grade this trade for me right now. Not necessarily a grade, but give me your thoughts a day later. What are you thinking of this trade now, 24 hours after it has been done? And then our comment spotlight of the day coming from Sarah. Really like the choice. Feel bad for Daylon and Ochai over the injury swirl, but Clifford is the best pick. Could not agree more, Sarah. I'm excited to see him play, and again, we are going to have a live stream on Tuesday night. It's a 10 p.m. Central Time start against the Portland Trail Blazers out in Portland, but we are going to go live for that game because I think that that may be the debut for Nick Clifford in a Thunder uniform. Just some kind of extra after the day later kind of thoughts here on the channel. If you're enjoying all the content, you want to see all the live streams, go subscribe down below, help us get to 11k subs, and we'll see you guys later here on the channel.