How Would Dereck Lively Fit With The Thunder?

The NBA Draft is always fun to pay attention to because of the gamesmanship and machinations, not to mention the sheer pleasure of speculation and imagination.

Duke’s Dereck Lively is one of the more interesting prospects. He’s getting a lot of attention because of his rim protection and his mobility. In this piece, the author takes a look at how Lively would fit with Oklahoma City.

First there would be some overlap with Chet Holmgren, assuming that he is fully recovered from his foot injury. OKC would have two very thin shot blockers, but who cares? They probably wouldn’t spend much time together on the court and the Thunder would likely have a top shot blocker in the game virtually every minute. That’s not too bad.

Aside from that, OKC is a very young team. Only Dario Saric (29) and Kenrich Williams (28) are over 25. They also feature Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (24), Jaylin Williams (20), Josh Giddy (20) and of course Holmgren is just 21.

As Lively said recently, he had a role at Duke that didn’t involve a lot of offense, and that was fine because he was more focused on winning. Who wouldn't appreciate that?

There are a ton of draft picks coming up too - check this out. We’re pretty sure that Lively could find a role with the Thunder as the team is now, but this team has a lot of assets. OKC could become a major pain very soon. Not a bad landing spot for Lively if it turns out that way, not bad at all.