As it is currently constructed, a strong argument can be made that the OKC Thunder roster consists of the best collection of young talent the association has to offer.

With an average age of just 24,148, Oklahoma City enters the 2024-2025 season as the youngest in the competition. Considering they are coming off a campaign in which they claimed the top seed in the Western Conference and won their first playoff series since 2016, this is truly wild.

With a core chock full of newcomers and only first-time contract hires, the future seems astronomically bright for Mark Daigneault’s ballclub, and recently the front office has made some rather lucrative financial decisions that will lock up this youthful unit for at least a year. at least for the next two seasons.

Ahead of Thursday’s season opener against the Denver Nuggets, the team announced via press release that they have exercised their rookie-scale team options on four second- and third-year players for the 2025-2026 NBA season.

Heading into this year’s run, all players involved were already committed to guaranteed payouts. Now, with this announcement, their salaries for the next competition year will also be set, with their financial figures reading as follows:

– Chet Holmgren: Fourth year: $13,731,368
– Ousmane Dieng: Fourth year: $6,670,882
– Jalen Williams: Fourth year: $6,580,997
– Cason Wallace: Third year: $5,820,240

Outside of Ousmane Dieng, three of these newly trained youngsters have established themselves as key figures within OKC’s main rotation.

Chet Holmgren is coming off a Rookie of the Year runner-up season in which he posted an impressive two-way averages of 16.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 2.3 blocks on 53.0 percent shooting from the field and 37.0 percent shooting from distance.

Jalen Williams led the Thunder team with 57 wins last year as he recorded 19.1 points, 4.5 assists and 4.0 rebounds on a highly efficient 54.0 percent shooting from the floor and 42 .7 percent from deep.

As for Cason Wallace, he’s coming off an under-the-radar, All-Rookie Team selected debut season in which he played in all 82 games and finished with 6.8 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists on 49.1 percent shooting shooting from the floor and 41.9 percent. percent shooting from beyond the arc.

Ousmane Dieng is still a work in progress through two full seasons, though he showed serious potential during this year’s preseason and could be in line for early-season work with the Thunder after their recent string of injuries.

While all of these players are currently at different stages of the young stud spectrum, they have done more than enough during their respective tenures to convince the Thunder that they are worth having a total of $32.8 million assigned to them for the period of 2025. -26 season.