As the NBA’s latest collective bargaining agreement, specifically its widely chronicled tax aprons, continues to reshape the modern model of championship-contending roster construction, a common denominator in these 2025 NBA Finals has emerged.
Depth.
In Oklahoma City’s runaway Game 2 victory over the Pacers on Sunday, which evened the series at one game apiece, Aaron Wiggins came off the bench to hit five 3-pointers en route to 18 points in 21 minutes. He was a game-high plus-24.
On almost any other team, Wiggins would be something close to foundational young player. He’s 26 years old. A 6-foot-6 shooter, defender and capable creator, he’s a prototypical two-way wing in today’s league, yet OKC has him on a five-year, $47 million contract that gets cheaper every year.
- 2025-26: $9.7M
- 2026-27: $8.8M
- 2027-28: $7.9M
- 2028-29: $7.9M (team option)
These descending contracts are highly valuable as teams are forced to pinch every penny to stay below tax lines. But even without this bonus, having a player like Wiggins locked up for five years at $47 million is a big value. Assuming he’s still in OKC in 2028 (trading a player on this kind of contract as OKC’s roster will only get more expensive is unlikely) and hasn’t suffered some sort of major injury, the Thunder are going to jump on that team option. Factor in rising salary caps, and having Wiggins at less than $8 million is, in NBA money, couch-cushion stuff.
Again, on just about any other team, Wiggins would be a core guy — either a starter or first-guy-off-the-bench nightly fixture. In Oklahoma City, he’s the eighth man. Four times in these playoffs he has played fewer than 10 minutes. He played nine in Game 1 of the Finals. Then he pops into Game 2 and starts doing things like this:
And this:
This is a luxury to have coming not just off your bench, but deep off your bench, and a necessary contract on the books as the Thunder will eventually have to balance two more max- or near-max salaries when Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren come up for their extensions.
That’s why you see the Thunder hanging onto all these future draft picks they’ve accumulated, because the only way to create meaningful depth on a modern roster is to have as many avenues to cheap contracts as possible. This way you can financially offset, and from a basketball standpoint, support your highest-paid players, because the days of being able to compete with a Big Three and nothing beneath them are over. Go ask the Suns, who had Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal and couldn’t even make the Play-In Tournament.
Durant and Booker would, arguably, be the two best players on the Pacers. And yet here the Pacers are, with the same commitment to depth as the Thunder, three wins for a championship with a legitimate 10-man rotation and a bench unit that includes the game-changing T.J. McConnell, 2023 first-round pick Ben Sheppard, a stretch big in Thomas Bryant, and two lottery picks in Bennedict Matthurin, who has scored at least 20 points three times in these playoffs, and Obi Toppin, who sunk five 3s in Indiana’s Game 1 win.
Depth is winning in these playoffs. It’s probably the main reason the Pacers got past the Knicks, and the Thunder outlasted the Nuggets. Indiana is actually playing more guys than OKC in this series, but the quality of Oklahoma City’s depth goes a level deeper.
We’ve gone this far in this article talking about Wiggins and haven’t even gotten to Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein, both of whom are stone-cold starters in this league masquerading as support pieces on OKC’s embarrassment-of-riches roster. The Thunder landing them this past summer is the reason they’re in this position.
Caruso had 20 points and four 3s in Game 2. Hartenstein is one of just two players who have logged at least 400 minutes and offensive rebounded over 10% of his team’s misses, per Cleaning the Glass. Isaiah Joe is a world-class shooter and he’s having hard time even getting on the floor. Kenrich Williams and Jaylin Williams, clear rotation-player talents in this league, play even less than Joe.
The NBA is a copycat league. Everyone looks at the teams competing for championships and asks what they can do to replicate the blueprint. Not everyone can trade for a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Tyrese Haliburton. Getting a player like Jalen Williams with a late-lottery pick is part scouting and part luck. A lot of teams could have traded for Pascal Siakam but didn’t consider him enough of a “needle mover” and in another context they might’ve been right.
But depth is tricky. Everyone can see how much it matters now more than ever, but achieving it is another story. Guys have to pop, and you have to get a few of them on friendly contracts, and then players as good as Aaron Wiggins or Alex Caruso have to be not just OK with, but actually enthusiastic about, lesser roles than their talent honestly deserve. For the Thunder and Pacers, but especially for the Thunder, it has all come together, and that’s largely why they are both three wins from a championship.
This news was originally published on this post .
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